A/N: You guys are so wonderful. I got so many great reviews from the last chapter (maybe because I shamelessly begged for them lol, but still). I really appreciate all of the guest reviewers who took the time. I can't reach out to you personally like my other reviewers, so I'm putting it here: You're all wonderful and too kind.

I know it can be annoying sometimes when an author pushes for reviews, but it's really just a function of how much of my time & energy is spent on this story when I have no one in my personal life to really discuss it with. Hearing from people through reviews and engaging in dialogue there is really the only release I get & it's enormously needed considering I've now been working on this story for a year and we're 400,000+ words in. So thank you!

Semi-important note here. I somehow, somewhere along the lines, screwed up the dates, not in that what I've posted to date was wrong but that I wrote too many chapters that haven't yet been posted. When I first realized, I tried to find a way to turn the last day of the story into a 5 chapter extravaganza, but I couldn't quite manage it. Some of those events cannot take place on the same day.

So, instead of lengthening the duration of the story, I'm just going to subtract a day from every chapter to date. So when I posted the last chapter it said it was the 29th, but once I backfill, it will say it was the 28th instead. It shouldn't make any difference to the reading of the story and it means the story will last a couple more weeks so all should be well.

I hope everyone…enjoys.

October 29, 1977


The room was quiet.

Just hours before there hadn't been a corner of the houses other than the Slytherin's that weren't noisy and overflowing with boisterous party-making. The party the Marauders had thrown in honor of Peter had transformed sometime around 4 A.M. into a bacchanal of old, minus the sacrifices and blood. Everywhere one turned there were bodies grinding feverishly together and alcohol splashing to the floor. Friends talked too loudly, unable to measure the volume of their voices when their blood was stirring with rum; couples fought and made up publicly for all to see; bodily secretions of every kind were ignored – sweat, vomit, saliva.

All in all, the students of Hogwarts had proven just how obscene a group of teenagers could be when they were free to submit to the pleasures of hedonism without any adult guidance.

The room, now at nine in the morning, was still.

James stumbled to his feet, slipping on some spilled butterbeer in the process. He regained his feet and continued on with singular purpose. Reaching an empty wastebasket in the corner, he threw up a stream of bile.

There, now he could return to sleep with all the decent people who would never dream of greeting the day before noon on a Sunday.

To his surprise, James wasn't alone. He noticed as he turned around that Dahlia was there, crouching over where Remus was sleeping. With incredible care not to wake him, she placed a blanket over his shoulders, tucking the edges down around him. A few of his memories were obscured, taking on what he'd describe as a grimy film with the alcohol he'd consumed, but James was pretty certain he hadn't seen Dahlia and Remus interact at the party in a way to explain her newly affectionate behavior.

Dahlia jumped a bit in surprise when she saw James staring at her. She couldn't have possibly missed him vomiting in the corner, which meant she'd thought she could sneak away before James noticed her. If she'd taken his moment of staring to run, she probably could have convinced him that the entire thing was a figment of his imagination because his brain wasn't functioning at full-capacity, but instead she froze like a rabbit, and James was able to commit the event to memory.

"No blanket for the others?" James asked quietly, nodding at where Sirius was sleeping.

She shrugged guiltily. James looked her over more carefully. Unlike the rest of them, she wasn't in her clothes from the party but rather in a warm-looking flannel pajama top with sweatpants on the bottom. Her hair was in a disarray like she'd only just woken and her eyes still held the dreamy haze of sleep. Since she was a Gryffindor like them, James couldn't figure out where she'd gotten the pajamas as they certainly weren't in their common room.

"Where'd you sleep?" James asked.

"Um…just upstairs," Dahlia said, embarrassed. James put two and two together, realizing that she must have hooked up with one of the Hufflepuffs last night. The sweatpants were baggy on her frame, like a bloke's.

James probably should have left it out of respect for Remus, but he couldn't stop himself from sneering, "You're unbelievable."

"Remus can judge me. Not you," Dahlia whispered, stepping away from her sleeping ex-boyfriend.

"How could I not?" James demanded in turn.

Unable to remain standing when he was still dizzy and slightly drunk, James resettled onto the couch. To his surprise, Dahlia sat on the floor opposite of him, looking speculative. Without his realizing, he'd just set himself up to have a heart to heart with a girl while he was hungover and miserable and dying for nothing more than a few more hours of sleep. James resisted the urge to moan.

"I don't know what he told you about me, but we did have our reasons to break up," Dahlia murmured softly. "I know we're young and people say we have all the time in the world, but I don't think that way. My dad died when I was only four. Life can be short, I know that better than most, and I'm not willing to waste a minute on it with someone who doesn't see a future for us. I love Remus, but if he can't bring himself to treat us seriously, then I can't be with him, and I won't apologize for looking for someone else who will."

Somewhere in the back of his mind, James had known about Dahlia's deceased father, but he'd never really taken the time to inspect that knowledge and apply it to her situation with Remus. A motivation like that was so blameless that James had to cough guiltily at the way he'd demeaned her a minute before.

"What you have to understand about Remus is –"James stopped himself, unsure what he could say to fix things without revealing his friend's secret. "He did take you seriously, more than you can imagine. It's a self-esteem thing with him. He has this…thing in his life that he can't talk about, and it makes him think all sorts of things about himself, untrue things. But if you're just there for him and consistent, you'll start to understand."

"You say that like it excuses everything. What am I supposed to do with that information?" Dahlia said.

James tried not to get frustrated as he answered, "Give him a second chance."

"He has a huge, identity-influencing secret that he won't share with me that makes him not want a future together, and there are no guarantees he'll ever change. Why would I want any of that?" Dahlia said, and this time James didn't try to answer her rhetorical question.

Instead, he thought to Lily and that potion she was working on. There was a hope for change, even if Remus didn't recognize it himself. Lily would complete that potion, or at least the start of the research, and then others, great potioneers, would commit themselves to the same study. Give it a year, two at most, and they'd have a potion that allowed Remus to keep his mind during the change or something to suppress it entirely! Then, gone would be his shame at his loss of control; the stigma would go shortly after. Everything would be fine and he would be able to open up to Dahlia fully. She just had to stick it out a little longer.

"He might get better. The problem could go away with time," James said, suddenly urgent in his need to convince Dahlia not to throw away everything she had with his best friend.

"Do you know what the worst moments in our relationship were? The ones where I thought I might hate him?" Dahlia asked, a challenging glint in her eyes. "The ones where he'd tell me he loved me. Knowing that he had some huge secret – because I did know, how could I not? – and that he didn't see fit to tell me…that's not love. Love can't exist between two people who don't know each other, and you can't know someone if they only show you the parts they're proud of. All a relationship is is a commitment to sharing your life with another person. Anyone unwilling to do that is just playing around."

Her words rang too true for James to argue. He didn't want to pursue his thoughts about her comment though because it led to a place he didn't want to consider. A relationship was about honesty, a trait he possessed in abundance and…certain unnamed others didn't. A relationship was about sharing the worst parts of yourself and your day, like his discovery about his parent's intervention with the Head Student position, not hiding away the ugly parts…like perhaps a student who was torturing you for fun.

"Don't tell him I was here," Dahlia pleaded.

Some part of James wanted to urge her to change her mind. Loyalty to Remus all but demanded it, but he couldn't do it. She was right about everything she'd said. Remus's relationships weren't bound for failure because he was a werewolf. They were doomed to fail because he was a liar.

So James said nothing as Dahlia went back upstairs to her unknown Hufflepuff lover. Said nothing and fell back on the couch and into another couple hours of deep sleep.


James had been awake for the last quarter of an hour. Awake but desperately wishing that he was not. He was fairly certain he didn't have a headache, but he was afraid that the moment he opened his eyes and was exposed to the fractured sunlight streaming through the narrow windows that would change, and he had little desire to experience the unforgiving, pulsing headache that so often accompanied a night of whiskey. The whole avoidance thing could only last so long though because he wasn't alone on the couch and the other occupant had kicked him in the stomach twice in as many minutes.

Reluctantly, James opened his eyes to a wrecked common room. A painting had been knocked sideways – its occupant dangling from the frame – one yellow-black tapestry had stains all over it, and there were glasses scattered across the floor, some intact and others smashed into bits of glass. All James could think was that he was glad this wasn't his common room, though knowing how his house liked to party, it likely hadn't fared much better than Hufflepuff's.

The kicker turned out to be Remus, who was having some sort of fidgety dream, though thankfully not a nightmare, judging by his dopey smile. He was holding the blanket Dahlia had left him like a teddy bear, caressing the fabric to his cheek. Looking far less comfortable, Peter lay sprawled out across the floor with his hand resting in a bowl of jelly beans. Sirius sat in an armchair. He was perfectly awake and sipping a cup of tea.

"Didn't think to make two, did you?" James asked. His voice was scratched completely raw, a byproduct of having to scream over the music for nearly six hours last night.

"'Fraid not."

James couldn't say he was particularly surprised, consideration never being Padfoot's thing. Now Peter was a good friend. He would have made sure James was woken to a cup of tea and toast…if he wasn't passed out and drooling.

"Reckon we must have had fun last night," James said.

"You blacked out?" Sirius asked.

James shook his head. Mercifully, James hadn't lost all memory of the night before and certain meaningful conversations he'd had with the red-haired temptress in his life. Now that would have been a disaster, probably ending with Lily changing her mind altogether. And James didn't know if he could stomach that particular disappointment.

He tried not to think about how Lily still didn't know what he'd done Friday night.

Unexpectedly, Sirius asked, "Did you give Regulus a hard time the other night?"

Lily wasn't the only one James had left in the dark about Friday's many confrontations. Knowing what a brat Regulus was, James had expected the kid to run squealing to his brother at one point or another. Squinting since he wasn't wearing his glasses, James couldn't make out whether Sirius looked bothered or not. He had no way of knowing how to frame his answer.

"He was being a twat about your mum again," James said, aiming for casual. "It's not like I promised you I'd leave him alone or anything."

Getting defensive with Sirius was a rookie mistake, and James regretted it instantly. Sirius had too good a nose for sniffing out guilt, and in his world, guilt only accompanied the worst wrongdoing.

Sirius laughed roughly. "Would it make a difference if you had promised?"

"Of course it would," James said. "I keep my word."

"Oh yeah. I sure did love our night together, just the two of us," Sirius drawled sarcastically.

Not being an idiot, James put together what was happening pretty quickly, but he still needed a minute to convince himself that he wasn't missing something because there was no way Sirius was throwing a fit over James not honoring his promise to hang out with him alone last night. The extenuating circumstances had been huge. To be upset would be completely unreasonable. And yet…

"Mate, Peter had just been let out of the hospital. What did you want me to say? 'Hullo, Pete, so great to have you back but I'm off with Sirius for some fun and you're not invited?' Don't be a prat," James said.

Not so much as a single muscle in Sirius's face moved.

"That's just ridiculous! Peter's our friend!" James said.

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wanted to talk to you about something important?" Sirius asked.

Trying to keep the frustration out of his voice, James said, "Well, I'm here now. We can go get breakfast and talk."

"The moment's gone," Sirius said darkly.

James didn't know what to say, feeling wrong-footed in the area of his life in which he was usually most certain. He was all too familiar with moody Sirius, but it was next to unheard of that his anger would be directed at James. Try as he might, James couldn't pinpoint where the problems had started either. It was like one day they were fine and the next Sirius had grown a year's worth of resentment.

There was one major change though that James had recognized was bothering Sirius for weeks. The evidence had been piling up while James pretended not to notice because he didn't want to acknowledge that his relationship with Lily was a problem for Sirius. Once he did, he'd have to admit that he was choosing a course of action that hurt his best friend out of pure selfishness. There was no other way to act, however, because giving up Lily would destroy him. She'd weaseled her way into his life and become the very foundation of the person he wanted to become. Better to cling to all of his justifications and wait.

Now though, Sirius was forcing his hand. So, delicately, James said, "Listen, I know you don't like Lily –"

"I like Lily," Sirius interrupted.

"What?"

"I like Lily," Sirius repeated simply.

Under normal circumstances, James was a believer in trusting his gut. He'd observed Sirius's reaction to Lily for weeks, and the evidence that they had a major problem was overwhelming. There was Lily's constant judgment of Sirius's choices, their quibbling over Sirius's treatment of Marlene, an underlying tension regarding Lily's relationship with James. All of that combined to suggest that the two Gryffindors really didn't get along.

There was just one problem with that conclusion. When it came to James, Sirius never lied.

Sure Sirius could withhold his feelings with the best of them, but he would never outright lie to James' face. It was part of why James didn't ask questions he knew Sirius wasn't ready to answer. Once asked, Sirius would be compelled to answer honestly, and James didn't like to put that kind of pressure on his friend. So given all of that, James was forced to quickly reassess everything he knew because only one thing was certain in that moment: Sirius genuinely liked Lily.

"I thought you had problems with her," James said.

"I wish she'd lay off my relationship, yeah, and occasionally she makes me barmy, but that doesn't mean I hate her or anything. She's alright," Sirius said.

"So you being upset lately…it's not about Lily?" James asked slowly.

"I didn't say that."

James wanted to bang his head off the table beside the couch. Every direction of this conversation just left him more confused and he wished Sirius would just spell out the situation plainly. Sirius liked Lily, but she was still the problem? James didn't know what the hell that meant!

The whole ordeal was made all the more uncomfortable because they were in foreign territory – namely, the Hufflepuff common room. While they were alone for the moment, James was cognizant of the danger of some random student overhearing them.

"Explain," James ordered gruffly. He found his glasses in his pocket and slid them on so that he could better search Sirius's body language for clues.

"I mean that just because I like Lily as a person doesn't mean I like the two of you together. It means that I don't think she's a tenth as serious about you as you are about her, and watching you set yourself up for misery isn't my idea of a good time –"

"Shows how much you know!" James barked. He was more than a little indignant. Sirius had no business interfering with his relationship, and James had thought Sirius would show him the respect to keep his opinions to himself. "Lily told me that she wants to make things official just last night. She's not leading me on or making me the fool or whatever else you thought she was doing."

"Bully for you," Sirius muttered.

"What the fuck? I just told you that your worry was unfounded and you're still pissy? What do you need to hear me say?" James demanded.

Sirius rolled his eyes. He managed to convey an enormous amount of disdain through the tiny motion. It made James feel small and ridiculous. A feeling that only made heat rise up the back of his neck in retaliation.

"I want you to let me finish," Sirius said. "I'm thrilled that Evans decided you're worth the time. Absolutely spiffing news. But that was only my first problem with the two of you, and I'm more bothered by the second anyway."

"Which is?"

Sirius grew quiet as he considered. James could see the calculations spinning through his friend – no brother's – head. He was deciding whether or not to answer. "I just…do you even know what's going on with me lately? You're just never there and with everything I'm going through, I would have thought you'd care, but you're off chasing skirt every time I look for you. The problem isn't Lily. It's you."

There was a clock on the wall above James' head, and the sound of its ticking hands resounded loudly in the room. On one level, James felt awful. He hadn't spent much time thinking about Sirius's well-being lately. Even knowing that the Blacks were launching a full-scale, manipulative attack to coerce Sirius into returning to their twisted tribe, James hadn't become involved. On another level though, James bristled at the accusation. He hadn't been ignoring Sirius's situation. Rather, he'd been waiting for Sirius to open up about everything. His silence had been born out of respect, not indifference. The day Sirius came to him ready to talk, James would be there.

"You know I care," James protested.

"The evidence has suggested otherwise," Sirius answered coolly.

Not shouting his outrage required James digging his nails into the flesh of his palms. The evidence? He had six years of constant concern but all it apparently took was a few weeks of distraction and Sirius developed a convenient bout of amnesia regarding all of the things James had done for him over the years. (Opening up his home came to mind.)

"Listen, yes, Lily has been a priority for me lately, but that doesn't mean anything changes with us. It's like Quidditch, yeah? I always obsess over the season, but that doesn't mean I'm not there for you," James said. "I still care."

"Slytherin party. Two weeks ago. Regulus said that horrific pureblood shit, and we went outside to talk it out. What happened?" Sirius said.

"I don't know. You never mentioned," James said.

"You never asked."

James felt sick, and Sirius looked sick despite the gleam of triumph in his eyes. James had never thought to ask. Desperate to do something with his hands, James rubbed along the stubble that had begun to grow from a day and a night without shaving.

"I need a glass of water or some coffee and to brush my teeth. Let's get out of here, and then you can tell me just what the hell you're getting at," James suggested more sharply than he'd intended.

Sullen as he was, Sirius still wasn't going to deny James such a reasonable request. They agreed that James should run back to the Tower and get dressed for the day. Then, they would meet in a quarter of an hour and continue their conversation on equal, groomed footing.

The walk back to the Tower was spent entirely lost in his own thoughts. A million different scenarios, each more unpleasant than the next, plagued him as he imagined what his conversation with Sirius would entail. The smoothest path would be to apologize immediately and profusely. Listen to Sirius's demands and agree to meet them. Once that was out of the way, things could return to normal. All James would need to do was settle for a little chastisement and agree to spend less time with Lily.

The problem (besides his hesitance to agree to less Lily) was that he didn't want to admit any wrongdoing. With every step he took he grew more convinced that he'd done nothing wrong, and that Sirius was just being a git. He could hardly be expected to grovel for forgiveness because he'd been seeing a girl. Rather than appease Sirius, James had half a mind to return to his friend's side and tell him that he was a right twat who needed to gain a little independence.

That particular imagined scenario never ended in James' favor, so he spent the time it took for him to brush his teeth trying to suppress the urge. Play nice. Play nice. Play nice. This wasn't some jumped up Slytherin, this was Sirius. He couldn't let this devolve into petty insults. They both had complete destructive power over each other, and their hits would land way too close to home.

Caught up with his strategizing as he was, James took a bit longer than the agreed upon fifteen minutes to get ready. He was just tossing on a fresh set of robes – ones that hadn't been the landing zone for a quarter bottle of giggle water that had spilled the night before – when the door flew open. James sighed, fully expecting to see an impatient Sirius standing at the door.

"I'm coming, you bloody –"

James paused when he saw that Lily was the one waiting at the door, not Sirius. A quick glance was all that it took to convince him that he'd rather be dealing with Sirius.

Lily looked awful, an adjective he'd never before used to describe her. The makeup she'd worn last night hadn't been removed but had streaked to make her eyes a smudgy, darkened mess. Her hair was unbrushed, unkempt. She was wearing two different patterned socks for Merlin's sake. Worst of all, were the dark circles beneath her eyes. All the physical evidence suggested that Lily had been crying.

The moment the realization struck him, James took a step forward, wanting to comfort her. Everything about her body language, however, screamed at him to stay away. She actually flinched backwards as he moved forwards, and her eyes darkened to something unwelcome. Accusation was written plainly all over her face.

And James knew why. He wanted to play dumb, not even to protect himself from her but to protect himself from what he'd done to her. He didn't want to be the person who'd made her look so distraught, who'd made her cry, but he knew that he was. It had always been only a matter of time before she heard about Nott's trip to the Hospital Wing. Somehow, he'd always imagined she would take it better.

"I asked you to stay out of it," Lily said hoarsely.

"I know," James said.

"And?"

And nothing. James felt guilty, sure, for upsetting her, but he didn't feel an ounce of regret for what he'd done. Had his retribution against Nott been violent and awful? Yes, but in James' opinion, the bastard had gotten off easy with only a broken leg and a concussion to whine about. Every bone in his body shattered would have been more fitting.

And still not enough.

When he'd learned that Lily's mystery tormenter was Nott, it had been like he was having an out-of-body experience. His rage had carried him through the castle on the hunt. It was only after he'd slammed Nott's head up against the wall, had heard that sickening crack of meat against stone that he came back to himself, and it still wasn't enough to stop him. He'd still kicked and stomped into the joint of Nott's knee until that had emitted the satisfying sound of a break as well. He'd been perfectly clear-minded as he drove home that particular lesson.

"I told you to stay out of it. I explained why I felt like I needed to handle it on my own. I all but begged you to respect that!" Lily cried.

"Oh, you needed to handle it on your own?" James snarled, his own ire arriving unexpected but blazing. "That didn't stop you from asking Snape for help."

"That's different! That wasn't about Nott at all, it was about – You know what? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I trusted Sev to help and not you or if I trusted Voldemort himself over you! I asked you to respect my decision, and the second you had the information, you raced off to beat up Nott! Just last night I told you that I trusted you, and all that time you knew!"

"Yes, it's obvious how much you trust me. Not enough to tell me who's literally torturing you or to help you out, of course, but it's not like those things matter in the first place. You sure do trust me," James spit.

Lily released a frustrated shriek, balling her hands into fists by her sides. "You can't possibly hope to make me feel guilty for not trusting you about Nott when you just proved that you can't be trusted!"

James sat down on the edge of his bed, hoping the move would encourage Lily to do the same, but she stayed standing. Stayed fighting.

"Well, you can't expect me to feel guilty for trying to protect you!" James shot back.

"I didn't need you to protect me! I had it under control," Lily said.

"Under control? Last time you saw him he stabbed you! I'd hate to see what out of control looks like in your world," James said.

Lily shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Clearly she hadn't expected him to know about that incident, and her argument kind of fell apart in the wake of it.

"We weren't going to be partners anymore," Lily said quietly. "I was finding a solution."

"This was the solution. Now, that fucker will think twice before he gives you – or any other muggleborn – a hard time. Sometimes a lesson is the only thing that works with these people," James said gently. He could sense that Lily was quavering, and if he could just talk her around, they could back away from the ledge they'd found themselves perched upon. The end was almost within reach.

Lily directed her eyes down to the floor. "I wanted to beat him on my own terms. It meant a lot to me."

"You did beat him. It's all over now. Don't you see?" James said.

It was the wrong thing to say somehow because the dimming fire in Lily's eyes sparked back to life. "No, you don't see! All Nott thinks is that I had to ask my stronger, pureblood boyfriend to fight my battles for me. And what does that say about me? That I'm too weak to manage by myself. Nott doesn't think I've beaten him, and he doesn't recognize what a mistake he made when he decided to target me. He's known from the start that you were strong. It's me that had something to prove!"

"Alright, come on then," James ordered. He grabbed Lily by the arm and began steering her out into the hall. She didn't resist, but her arm was tense under his hold.

"Where exactly are we going?" Lily questioned.

"To find Nott. Don't worry about if he's not alone. I'll take care of any of his friends, and we'll make it clear to him that I'll take the fall for you. That way you don't have to worry about getting in trouble with the professors. Then, you just hex away. I'd recommend targeting his leg again – the left one. It'll hurt twice as bad because even with Pomfrey's potions a bone stays tender for a few days after a mend," James lectured.

Lily slowed to a halt, and James had to stop as well or risk dragging her down the stairs. The look she levelled him with was one of pure disgust. Her glare was perfectly identical to the ones she used to direct his way when they were fifteen. Seeing her regard him like that zapped him of every bit of confident determination he had in his body. When she turned and strode back into his dormitory, he followed, shutting the door behind him in preparation for what he could only assume would be the continuation of their argument.

"You just don't get it, do you?" Lily said the moment the door had closed.

"No, I guess not. You say you want to show him that you can beat him? Then go do it! You're just about the strongest witch I know. You could decimate him."

"I can't beat him with violence. If I hurt him, that's just proof that I'm some kind of animal that can't control myself. That's what he'll say. That the rabid mudblood attacked him," Lily said.

"Don't say that," James ordered sharply.

"What? Mudblood?" Lily's laughter bordered on the cruel.

"Yes!"

Lily crossed her arms over her chest, but the move didn't look defiant. Instead, she looked like she was holding herself together, like if she were to remove her arms, all of her organs and guts and things that made her Lily would come tumbling to the floor. As angry as she was, she was also vulnerable.

Sighing, James decided to share an honest truth. "I understand that you wanted to show Nott he made a mistake, but you were never going to convince him, Lily. There's no way this ended where Nott walked away thinking he'd misjudged you. If being strong and brave and wonderful was enough to make people see the truth about muggleborns, then they would have abandoned their beliefs within minutes of entering Hogwarts. No one who's thinking clearly could meet you and think that you're anything less than extraordinary."

"It was never just about proving something to Nott," Lily confessed, her voice lowered to all but a whisper. A susurration that would have gone unnoticed if he hadn't already been listening intently for her response. "It was about proving something to myself too. He made me feel small, weak…unsafe, and it's only going to get worse after we leave here. I'm scared, no terrified, that I'm going to spend every minute outside of school feeling like this, and it's awful. I just wanted to convince myself that I could handle it, keep myself safe –" Lily's voice cracked and her eyes grew wet. "Maybe if I could stop Nott, I could stop what's coming next."

Even as he told himself to give her space, James reached out for her. Watching her cry like that was too heartbreaking. Already the tears had spilled past the seal of her eyes and were trailing down her cheeks. She didn't push him away when he carefully rested his hands on either side of her ribcage, not quite drawing her into a hug because he worried she'd reject such an overt display of comfort.

"You are safe. I think you're so close to all of this that it's hard to think clearly but really look at the situation. Nott's going to leave you alone. So what does that tell you? That you'll be fine here or anywhere else. You can weather all of this," James said softly.

"But that's just because of you," Lily protested.

"So? I'll keep you safe here or anywhere else. I promise."

Rather than comforted, Lily grew agitated at his words. "I want to keep myself safe. Why aren't you getting this?"

"Maybe because it's stupid," James said, perhaps more harshly than was fair, but he was getting frustrated with the way the conversation was moving in circles. Plus, he'd already been worked up from his argument with Sirius. He was tired. "I'm sorry, but what does it matter how you're kept safe so long as you are?"

"Because I don't trust you!" Lily burst out. "What happens when you're gone, hmm? I can't afford to rely on someone else."

"I know you're upset because you feel I went around your back with Nott –" Lily scoffed at his choice of words, "– but we resolved this last night. I promise you, I'm not going to make you choose. I want you to have everything, just like we discussed. Our relationship isn't going to be about you sacrificing yourself for my needs, so stop worrying about it."

"And how can I possibly believe that?" Lily asked. She'd stopped crying. "You can't let me have something as basic as making my own choices. You took away my chance to have some faith in myself, the most fundamental thing a person should have. How can I trust you with anything else now?"

Had he imagined this moment, James would have predicted he'd feel nauseous, maybe a bit numb, some combination of panicked and miserable. He did feel all of those things, but his best guess would have missed the emotion that burned hottest of all in the moment: the pure outrage. He was angry, enormously so. An act that had been born of nothing but his care for her had been twisted into something controlling and malicious. His every word was now suspect. All of his previous good deeds, all of their time together was forgotten in favor of the absurd narrative that he couldn't be trusted.

Under the distorting influence of all that anger, it was hard to maintain perspective, to remember that he had knowingly ignored Lily's wishes and that her feelings regarding Nott were sympathetic. He was tired of being understanding. Remembering to empathize with the other side of all these accusations was growing harder because the natural inclination of a person under attack was always, always to defend, and James was no different.

"You can't trust me to let you make your own choices?" James scoffed. "You must be delusional. Every step of this thing between us has been on your terms, not mine. I don't decide shit because I'm too busy giving into everything you want, trying not to scare you off by having an opinion that you don't care for. All of this 'Oh, James, I'm worried that I'll just start making my every decision based off what makes you happy' –" James raised his voice into a trembling falsetto to intimate Lily, "– It just sounds to me like you're worried that you might have to compromise every once in a while. That not everything in our relationship is going to go your way."

Lily looked stunned. "That's…that's not fair. I'm sorry I wasn't ready to date you at first, but everything was moving so fast! You can't hold it against me that I wasn't ready."

"Maybe not," James admitted, "but then you can't claim I don't respect your decisions either because I've been nothing but considerate of how you feel."

"Until now when I needed it the most! I just can't believe you did this to me," Lily said, sounding halfway to broken, like she was dangling by a thread. "And now you're bringing all of this up to try to distract from the argument, to try to twist everything around so that you're the victim and I'm the awful bitch who leads you on."

"You brought it there first," James reminded her. In the back of his head, he recognized that it was a great sign that neither of them had made a move to leave. With any of his past girlfriends, James would have been out the door ten minutes ago. This willingness to stay and hash things out spoke volumes of their commitment to each other. Unfortunately, James desire to stay waned with every passing minute.

"Do you expect me to praise you for not forcing me to date you before I was ready? I don't know what you're trying to accomplish here, but the fact of the matter is that I started to trust you, against my better judgment, and I shouldn't have," Lily snapped, steel returning to her voice and posture.

"You lecturing me about trust? That is rich. Have you ever considered that you're the untrustworthy one? Have you considered that when I say we operate on your terms, I'm not just talking about making things official? You lie and you decide what parts of your life I'm allowed access to and when," James shouted. "I can't trust you when you're hiding everything from me either."

"Like what?" Lily foolishly demanded. Foolishly because James was armed and ready with the answers.

"You never told me about Nott, and not just his name. Even letting me know someone was harassing you was an accident –" James held up a hand to silence her rebuttal, "– I know, I know. I proved that I couldn't be trusted with that, but how about this: You never told me what your fight with Shelia was about. I've managed to work it out for myself now that I know about Nott, but you would have left me in the dark forever. A fallout that huge with your best friend and nothing."

"You of all people should understand being private about your friends. You don't share the Marauders' business with just anyone," Lily said.

It felt good to have her on the defensive, so James couldn't resist pushing on her weak point. "I'm not just anybody! When I found out about Remus and Dahlia, I told you, and that was before we'd even kissed. You can't claim I keep secrets about my friends from you. I've been an open book since the start because I actually wanted, unlike you, for this thing to work between us!"

"You're right! I'm – I'm sorry…I just – so I didn't tell you two things," Lily said.

"There's more. How about what changed that made you friends with Snape again? Or why didn't you tell me after he intimidated you in the Hospital Wing. Don't try to deny it. Peter saw you," James challenged.

"I – I – I wasn't ready," Lily said helplessly.

Rather than triumphant, the further James backed Lily into a corner, the angrier he became. Listed out all at once, her little transgressions started to add up into something unforgivable. Maybe he'd fucked up – though he'd argue the point vigorously – but so had Lily, and she had no right to stand there and sanctimoniously preach to him now.

"Then there's you and the other guys. Fawning all over Carmichael."

"We're friends. We went on one date, and I told you there was nothing to worry about!" Lily said with a gasp.

"Kissing Peter last night," James continued.

"You can't be serious? I was drunk and trying to be nice, and it was Peter. He doesn't count! You can't possibly think I'd be interested in him," Lily protested urgently.

(A very fair point, and one he'd accepted last night, but he was kind of past the point of fair and rational just then.)

James laughed humorlessly. "It shouldn't be this hard."

"What shouldn't?" Lily asked.

"You and me. Dating's supposed to be fun and easy. Not whatever this is," James said. All of the fun moments they'd shared felt very distant to him just then.

"James, you know that I'm scared of letting people in, of losing them, so I lie and try to hide parts of myself," Lily said urgently. "But I'm getting better."

"Have you ever considered that all that paranoia's going to be what drives them away?" James asked coldly.

Maybe everything would have been different if she'd started to cry again. The sight of Lily's tears would have shocked his brain into working again. He'd remember that this was Lily and hurting her was just about the last thing he wanted to do. She didn't cry though. Her face just grew oddly blank, like she was the drawing of a human rather than a living, breathing person. The sight of her, emotionless and uncaring, only fed into his worst instincts.

"I'm done. I'm not doing this with you anymore," James said. He walked past her to the door. "You can stay if you like, but I'm leaving."

He didn't allow himself a look back to see her reaction. Another if, but if he had, he would have seen Lily standing perfectly still in the center of the room, mouth slack and wearing an expression of pure agony. He didn't look though. Instead he marched off to meet Sirius at the agreed upon spot outside the kitchens. Caught up in his argument with Lily, James was nearly forty-five minutes late.

When James arrived, Sirius was long gone.


A/N: This chapter could be titled "James' No Good Horrible Very Bad Day". One of the shorter chapters of the story, but you can't rush a climax chapter, so…Thanks for reading and I hope everyone enjoys their weekend…unlike James, who really really didn't.