Chapter Twenty-Eight:

Protecting Lily Evans

"Lily, you should really make sure to zip up your backpack," Remus told me matter-of-factly. "You never know what someone might put in there without you seeing."

"I thought I'd lost you two," I muttered angrily as he and James appeared on either side of me. To my right, Remus was zipping up my backpack, a disdainful smile on his face. And to my left, James was gazing down at me, studying my expression. At the last corridor, in an attempt to distract the boys, I had pointed to Nearly Headless Nick, who was attempting to fully remove his head. Once they had turned to see Nearly Headless Nick floating in circles, trying with all his might to pull off his head, they had both broken into hysterical fits of laughter. I took that opportunity to slip away, slowly at first, but then making a run for it. However, just a few corridors later, they had caught up with me.

Ever since Remus and I had overheard Regulus and Snape's conversation in the hallway, our friends hadn't left Sirius and me alone a single moment. They followed us everywhere, convinced that we were going to get attacked at a moments notice.

"You heard Snape say so himself! They're going to come after Sirius because of Regulus and they're going to go after you because of Snape," Marlene said stubbornly every time I argued with her about being able to protect myself. "We're just trying to help, Lil."

Remus, who understood I didn't like the arrangement, kept throwing me sympathetic smiles. James, on the other hand, hadn't spoken a word to me, but he kept a steady gaze on me, as if trying to memorize every single feature on my face.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," I snapped at him.

He shrugged. "Maybe I will."

I fumed as he and Remus continued their previous conversation about Quidditch. I hated that James was there to "protect" me. I hated that all of my friends thought of me as some fragile little doll that needed protection. I was just as skilled as all of them in fighting and dueling.

"Slytherins!" Remus hissed as a gang of gorilla-faced students came marching down the hallway.

"Remus, you can't freak out every time you see Slytherins," I said, shaking my head.

"Yes, he can," James warned. "I don't trust those fat toads."

"Me neither," Remus agreed, shivering slightly.

I groaned dramatically and tried marching up ahead of them, but they just quickened their pace and kept up with me.

I appreciated all of my friends for trying to protect me, but at the same time they were all driving me up the bloody wall. I never had a moment alone. Even when I was showering, Marlene or Dorcas would be in there, idly reading a magazine, waiting for me. I mean, they even had a schedule for who would be keeping me guard and who would be keeping Sirius guard. Sirius, though, was much better at sneaking off than me, and many times, an out-of-breath Peter would be running around the school, calling Sirius's name desperately.

"How do you do that?" I hissed to Sirius on one particular night in the common room.

"Do what?" he asked, confused. He'd been absorbed in reading an article about the Chudley Cannon's last game.

"Just disappear like that!"

He grinned. "This is when my marauding ways pay off. I know this school better than anyone. Only problem is that James knows as much as me and he finds me eventually."

"Help me!" I begged.

He shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"Why not?" I demanded furiously.

"Because I don't want to be the one that gets you poisoned again," he said before returning to his reading.

"You're in more danger than I am!" I said fiercely, snatching the article away from him.

"Yes, but I welcome danger. Danger is my middle name, after all," he said with a wink.

I frowned. "I thought your middle name was Orion after your father."

"Yes, well, my father is an idiot."

I crossed my arms. "Well, maybe I welcome danger too."

He snorted. "Lily, you're barely five feet tall and you weigh like a hundred pounds. Let's be serious here. You couldn't hurt a fly!"

"I weigh loads more than a hundred pounds!"

"Fine," he said. "You weigh more than a hundred pounds, but that still doesn't mean I want you roaming around the castle all by yourself."

"Sirius, I'm not in any danger! There are loads of other muggleborns at this school."

"I'm not taking that risk," he said, crossing his arms stubbornly.

"Fine," I snapped, stomping out of the room. As I predicted, Marlene and James jumped up to follow me.

"Where are we going?" James asked pleasantly as we climbed out the portrait hole.

"You know," I told them, "when I'm on Head duty patrolling the hallways, the two of you can't be following me around."

Marlene rolled her eyes. "You're forgetting here that our James is Head Boy too."

"Oh, yeah," I remembered unenthusiastically.

"Don't sound too excited," James muttered sarcastically.


"So," I said, handing everyone a piece of paper. "I have"— James cleared his throat loudly —"Okay, James and I have made up a schedule for all of you. Each of you will have patrolling duty once a week. Now, your schedule for the rest of term is here. If you forget or miss even one day of patrolling, ten points from your house will be taken."

"What if we have to miss one night of patrolling...if we were sick or something?" a girl with pigtails asked.

"Well, if you have to miss one night, then make sure to ask one of your peers to swap with you for that week," James answered.

"Anymore questions?" I asked authoritatively.

"Yeah," one bloke in particular asked, "are you two together now or something?"

It took me a second for me to realize that he was talking about me and James, and I slowly felt my face burn. As everyone turned to stare at me and James, I wanted, more than anything to rip that stupid bloke's head out. I hadn't even realized how closely James and I were standing. Self-consiously, I stepped away from him.

"No, mate," James answered with a dramatic sigh. "She's a tough, but I'm working on it."

"You can work on it all you want, but it's never going to happen." I gritted my teeth, refusing to turn and look at him.

I could practically feel his smirk. "We'll see, Evans. We'll see."

"Anyway," I cleared my throat loudly, "any more questions that are relevant to what we were talking about?"

No one answered; they all continued staring at me and James. The only person who wasn't staring was Remus, who was in the back corner, silently having a fit of laughter.

"Well, dismissed, then," I announced coolly. As everybody began to file out, I turned and glared at Remus. "Stop laughing!"

"The look on your face...it was priceless," he snickered.

Behind me, I heard James chuckle.

"And you!" I swiveled around to James. "What's the matter with you?"

"Me?" he asked innocently.

"You embarrassed me in front of everyone!"

He shrugged. "I was just telling the people what they wanted to hear."

"I don't care what the people want to hear," I growled.

"Oh, I love it when you get angry," James told me fondly. "Your face gets all red and scary."

I shook my head, "What in the world did I ever see in you?"

James and Remus exchanged grins and I stormed past them furiously. Predictably, they both followed me.

"James, something fell out of your pocket!" a girl called, pointing to a blank piece of parchment on the floor.

"The map!" Remus hissed and both boys scrambled to retrieve it.

I took the glorious opportunity to slide into an empty corridor. Finally, I thought, a moment alone. It felt good not having someone breathing down my neck.

Just as I was appreciating my little alone time, Crabbe and Goyle came into view. They were the two ugliest and dumbest blokes I'd ever had the displeasure of meeting. Nervously, I tightened my grip around my wand, getting ready to use it at a moment's notice. Thankfully, I didn't have to, as both boys shuffled past me, throwing me dirty looks. I exhaled, glad no one had tried to attack me. Or so I thought. Flashes of green and red light flew past me, and I swiveled around to see both boys had shot spells at me. Luckily, Crabbe and Goyle were two big oafs, who had never been good at dueling, and they had both missed me by inches. The only dangerous thing about them was that they had no mercy and continued shooting off dangerous spells, completely unconcerned with who their spells were hitting.

"Bad move, boys," I said, trying to sound confident, even though I now wished I hadn't run away from James and Remus. "Besides taking fifty points from Slytherin each, I don't think you realize I'm not as easy to push around as I was last term. I spent a week in that hospital wing because of your lot. I'm not letting that happen again."

"How much you wanna bet?" Goyle grinned stupidly.

"Furnunculus!" Crabbe shouted, snickering. I blocked the pimple producing spell, but I knew this wasn't going to be easy. It was two against one, and these boys obviously wanted to humiliate me.

"You shouldn't have done that," Goyle growled, pulling me up by the neck of my shirt. With all the strength I could muster, I managed to pull away from Goyle, but that didn't really help much, as both boys were now firing hexes and jinxes at me full speed. I managed to duck and block every single one, but I knew I couldn't hold them off for much longer. They may have been idiots, but they were completely unconcerned with all of the spells bouncing off the walls. It was only a matter of time before a rebounding hex hit one of us. I just hoped it hit them first and not me.

They were throwing spells at me so fast, I didn't even have time to cast my own. I just kept blocking each one of their spells, slowly backing away, and wondering if anybody could hear me so they could help. After realizing I was on my own, I took a deep breath, and then fought back. Eventually, I managed to begin hurtling my own spells at them. But I wasn't as skilled as James or Sirius, and I missed a lot. But the fact that I was fighting back had to count for something. Maybe next time they would reconsider before attacking me.

And then everything seemed to have slowed down. Crabbe shouted stupefy and the spell missed my head by several inches, but it must have hit something behind me, because it came bouncing back and hit Goyle strait in the chest. Goyle's eyes widened for a split second as he realized he had just been hit, and then his body slumped to the ground with a thud. Crabbe and I both froze, staring at Goyle's limp body.

Finally, I tore my eyes away from Goyle and found Crabbe glaring at me, as if it were my fault he had just struck his best friend unconscious.

"Bad move," he spat, throwing his wand aside.

"Me?" I scoffed. "It was your stupid aim that did that to him. Not me!"

I realized a second too late that instead of talking, I should have used those precious seconds in which Crabbe had tossed aside his wand. But it was too late. He came charging at me and pushed me up against the wall, holding me by the collar. I looked into his muddy eyes, terrified at the look of pure hatred that was glaring back at me. Shuddering, I tried to regain my composure to show him that I wasn't scared, even if he did have his hands around my neck.

"We should have just killed you this way. Much more satisfying," he hissed. "You were so weak...vulnerable...lying in that bed, poisoned..."

"It was you?" I choked out as he tightened his grip around my neck. "You poisoned me?"

"I wish!" He laughed humorlessly. "They don't think we're good enough to join the Dark Lord. They want us to prove we can handle the missions he'd give us."

"Then kill me," I managed to say. "If that's your mission, then kill me."

"Oh, I will." He grinned. "But not now."

"Why not?" I demanded, trying to show him that I wasn't scared, even though my voice was trembling a bit.

"I want you to suffer. You filthy mudbloods don't deserve an easy death. We need to torture you, to hurt you, to make you beg us to kill you."

"Then make me suffer."

He scoffed. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Murder somebody with Dumbledore watching our every move?"

"You were stupid enough to attack me," I snarled.

He shrugged. "Couldn't help ourselves. You were all alone. None of your little friends there to help you."

"Oh, that's where you're wrong," said the most beautiful voice I'd ever heard in my life.

A confused Crabbe turned around to find a furious looking James glaring at him with so much hatred that I actually shrunk back a little.

"Get away from my girlfriend," he spat, before punching Crabbe with all the force he could muster. To my enormous surprise, James actually managed to knock out Crabbe.

Slowly I stepped closer to James, blinking, and rubbing the spot on my neck where Crabbe had previously had his massive hands on. I stared down at the two unconscious bodies in the corridor.

"Your welcome," James said smugly, turning to grin at me.

"I had it under control," I snarled at him, crossing my arms, suddenly very angry.

He snorted. "Yes, I could see that as he nearly choked you to death."

"And I'm not your girlfriend," I added.

He flinched. "I may have gotten...a bit carried away in the moment. You know me. I have a flair for the dramatics."

"Just let me handle it next time," I told him angrily.

He sighed. "Fine, next time I'll jump in and save your arse only if you're seconds away from death. Happy?"

"Stop it!"

"Stop what?" James asked, bewildered.

"Stop being so nice!"

"You want me to be mean? Well, if that's what you're into-"

"James!" I said sharply. The grin that had previously been on his face vanished.

"I don't understand what you want from me, Lil."

I threw my hands up in frustration. "I want you to stop being the good guy! You can't just go one minute from treating me like rubbish and ignoring me to acting like...like we're best friends or something! I'm sick of being portrayed as the bad guy when you're the one who broke my heart and acted like prick all summer!"

"You want me to be a prick again?"

"No! Yes! I don't know!"

He stared at me. "Lily, you're really sending me some mixed messages over here."

"I'm mad — no I'm pissed off at you! You broke my heart! You kissed somebody else on our date and then you acted like everything was my fault! Like the reason we weren't together was because of something I did —"

"— I never said anything was your fault," he protested.

"Let me finish!" I shouted. "You made me feel horrible every day for months. You know, some nights I even cried myself to sleep."

James stared at the floor. "I didn't know..."

I shook my head. "Look, the point is, I'm not ready to forgive you. I'm furious with you. Most of the time, I fantasize about ripping your head off and feeding it to that stupid spider Hagrid hides in the forest."

"That's a bit harsh don't you think?"

"No, it's not! Because I might have loved you, and you ruined it! Not me! And it's really hard for me to continue hating you if you're being so damn nice all the time and saving my life!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said sarcastically. "Next time I'll just let you die. Would that make you happy? Would that please Lily Evans?"

"Just stop being there when I need you!"

"Fine! Then stop needing me!"

"Fine!"

"Quit yelling at me!"

We stared at each other, breathing heavily, our chests rising and falling. On the floor between us, Goyle began to stir and I stomped my feet on his face. He groaned as his nose began bleeding and he fell back unconscious.

"Nice shot," James remarked, sounding impressed.

"Thanks," I muttered, recoiling slightly at the sight of the blood. "So," I said, looking back at James. "What do we do about these two?" I gestured to the two lumps on the floor.

"I guess you should go get McGonagall," he replied, looking at anything but me. "I'll wait here."

I nodded glumly and made my way past James and the two unconsious bodies sprawled on the floor.

"Lily?" James called after me. I turned back around slowly, wondering if we were about to continue our shouting match.

"Yeah?" I said hesitantly.

"Did you mean it...when you said you loved me?"

"I might have," I whispered. "I guess we'll never know..."

"I guess not," he said, smiling sadly.