"James Fleamont Potter, you entitled piece of shit!" Alice's voice echoed in the entire common room as she came storming out of the portrait hole.

James jumped out of the couch and onto his feet, hand on his wand, already preparing his Shield Charm in case she was done talking and ready to skip straight ahead to hexing.

"Did you think I wouldn't notice? Did you think somehow somewhere what you did was in any way okay?" she continued, planting herself right in front of him, lightning bolts shooting out of her eyes. "You know what, it's not even about what you did, it's about the intention behind it."

She was no longer screaming but her voice was dangerously low. For a split second James thought about escaping the situation and run to his dorm, but he knew he wouldn't get away with it that easily. Besides, causing a public scene was his plan all along and he couldn't just abandon it as soon as he was confronted to the actual consequences of his actions: about twenty pairs of eyes staring at him, burning a whole in the back of his neck. Lily was of course one of them, sitting at the other end of the room. She appeared to have been in the middle of her daily ritual of writing a letter to her sister but she was now looking up at Alice and James, the tip of her quill brushing against a faint smile.

"I thought you were my friend, but this is a low blow, even for you Potter," continued Alice.

It was perfect. Exactly what James would have made her say if he could have scripted the fight. But she said it too quietly and there was no way Lily could have heard that from all the way across the common room.

James took a courageous step forward, closer to Alice, whose rage was emanating actual heat. Trying to look as menacing as possible for everyone looking, he squared his shoulders, towering over her, for once being grateful for his height he usually found unpractical. He leaned towards her til their noses were practically touching.

"I'm gonna need to you to speak louder Captain," he whispered, nodding vaguely in Lily's direction. A wave of relief overwhelmed him when he saw the sudden comprehension settle in her face.

"You're a fucking idiot," she whispered back, shaking her head softly.

"Yeah I get that a lot," smiled James.

"And if you think for a second that little scheme is going to work, you are dead wrong Potter!" she said, much louder this time and James was satisfied to hear her voice filling the silence of the room. "You greedy, selfish little bastard!"

She put her hands on her chest and pushed him away, hard. James was taller and had a very athletic build, but Alice was the best Beater the Gryffindor team had had in years and was much stronger than him. James put a foot behind him to keep his balance, but managed to trip on his own schoolbag, and fell straight to the floor.

He winced from the pain echoing from his lower back to his scarred chest. Of course there was no way Alice could have known he had been recently injured, that secret remained between him, Madame Pomfrey and Peter. So he sucked up the pain and winked at Alice to reassure her.

"You okay?" she mouthed, looking very sorry.

James nodded discreetly before getting up, not without difficulty, hoping no one would notice him struggle.

"You are disrespectful and snobby and I wish I could never see your face again." Alice continued once she knew he was fine. "You are so fucking lucky you even have a once of a talent so I can't kick you off my team, but you just know that if something like that ever happens again I will not fucking hesitate."

James thought about interrupting her and bring his own spiciness to the fight, just to defend himself, but then thought he deserved to be publicly humiliated for blindsiding Alice and not telling her about the plan. Letting her insult him in front of an audience was a good way to make it up to her so he just let it happen, crossing his arms across his chest and biting his lip, trying to look remorseful.

"See you at Quidditch practice tomorrow if your enormous head hasn't exploded until then."

And she stormed off, leaving as swiftly as she entered. Embarrassed, James passed a hair through his unruly hair and smiled at a group of terrified looking second years.

"She must have been in a bad mood, she usually just hexes me," he shrugged to them, before sitting back down on the couch and returning to his homework. He was glad his friends had been down in the kitchen for their weekly raid and had missed the entire scene. They would have never let him live it down.

James tried to tune out the giggles and whispers filling the common room to focus on his work. He resumed his scribbling on his copy of Advanced Potion-Making, ignoring the pain in his chest and how difficult it made it to move his arm. He didn't want to draw attention to it and risk getting questions he could provide no answers to.

So far neither Remus nor Sirius had questioned his version of what happened down at the Shrieking Shack. Peter knew of course, but Peter had always been the person to turn to when you didn't want a secret getting out. He was the most loyal friend of all, and when James had asked him not go mention the scars, he had understood and agreed immediately.

Unconsciously placing a hand on his chest, James leaned over his schoolbook to try to decipher what he had just wrote. His handwriting was as messy as his hair, which he ruffled up with a sigh.

"Hey can I sit here?"

Before he could answer he felt someone sitting next to him. Annoyed, he rose from his book and turned to face a mass of wavy auburn hair and a sweet smell of apples. Lily.

"Erh hum what... I mean yeah, I mean sure."

Trying to compose himself, James leaned forward to pick up his quill he had dropped from the shock. He could already feel his heartbeat fasten and his stomach growing heavy. He pinched himself, hoping the pain would wake him up from whatever type of trance he always seemed to fall under whenever Lily was near.

"Marlene wanted me to talk to you."

"Why's that?"

Lily sighed and James tried not to stare at her lips. She obviously didn't want to be there and was annoyed to have been disturbed in the middle of her letter writing session. James turned around to look all the way across the common room and saw Marlene looking anxiously at them, twisting her hands.

"Is she okay?" James was worried now, it wasn't like Marlene to send someone to talk in her place.

"Oh she's fine, believe me," answered Lily a bit bitterly. "Just worried about Quidditch practice."

"Quidditch practice?" Now James was confused. "I don't understand, why would she be worried about that?"

Lily looked uncomfortable and like she wanted to be anywhere else but here. She crossed her arms across her chest and sighed.

"She seems to be under the impression that..." Lily paused to bite her bottom lip and James' heart skipped a bit so he turned back to his book. "Since you and Alice broke up that Quidditch practices are gonna be unbearable. She thinks you're gonna be at each other's throats all the time, and she doesn't want to spend her only time away from studying watching you two argue. And I can't blame her, no one wants to see that."

James chuckled flatly and passed a hand through his hair. He had a lot of trouble concentrating and thinking about what he wanted to say when Lily's knee was so close to his, so he moved away from her until the arm of the couch was digging into his back.

Her green eyes were holding his stare and for the first time in his life, James Potter couldn't think of a single thing to say. He forgot what she had just told him and why she was here. Panic instilled inside his brain and the only thing he thought was that he wished his friends were here, to give him that confidence he so desperately needed.

"She sent me to talk to you because she says I'm the only person you listen to apart from the Marauders," added Lily with a smile.

"She's not wrong, you're a prefect and I'm already on detention every other day of the week, I'm not trying to get more," James smiled back to her, wiping his sweaty hands on his robes.

"Oh really? I thought you collected those!" answered Lily, raising a perfectly arched eyebrow.

"Hilarious. Tell Marlene she shouldn't worry. Alice and I didn't break up because we were never together to begin with."

Lily corrected her posture and sat straighter, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear and James suddenly remember how soft her hair felt when they used the Polyjuice a million years ago.

"Oh, I thought.. You guys just looked.." she hesitated.

"She's like my older sister. We never dated, never will." interrupted James. He still felt really bad about the lie concerning him and Alice, even if it wasn't his doing. He was growing really tired of secrets and dishonesty, but he couldn't throw Remus under the bus. So he did what the Marauders would expect him to do: lie again.

"Alice has this guy she wanted to make jealous, so we passed around a rumor that we were going out, to help her," explained James, trying to come up on the spot with something that would seem believable enough. "But at some point she realized deception wasn't the right way to the guy's heart, so we had to have a big public fight to make it seem like we broke up, even if we were never together to begin with."

Lily sighed again and threw her hands in the air in desperation and in a perfect imitation of Alice dealing with James on the pitch.

"Why are you all so complicated? Can't you just talk to each other? Why does everything have to be a game?" she said, exasperated.

James shrugged, trying to not look too guilty.

"Being honest with one's feeling requires a certain type of courage that strangely seems to lack in the Gryffindor house. It's easier to make it into a game and to play pretend in order for it to feel more safe and more familiar. Love is unexplored territory. No one wants to be the first to get lost."

Lily looked up at him with a strange expression on her face and James feared he had said too much.

"Talk out of your ass with that much conviction again and you might just make it out there in the real world kid," she smiled finally.

"Piss off, I tried to answer your questions!" answered James, a little offended. He meant what he had said.

"They were rhetorical dumbass!"

"Well now I would normally answer something smart but I don't know what 'rhetorical' means!"

Their tones had been growing increasingly colder but upon that last sentence they looked at each other and laughed. Lily shook her head gently.

"You can ask Remus later."

"Good. You can tell Marlene she had nothing to worry about."

James was about to get back to his book when he noticed Lily was not standing up and didn't look like she was going to leave.

"There's one more thing I wanted to ask you," she said, and James felt his heart tighten.

"Shoot."

"When you fell earlier, when Alice pushed you.." Lily bit her lip once again and James started reading it as a sign of nervousness. "You're hurt, aren't you? Physically I mean. You tried to hide it, but you were in a lot of pain James."

And then suddenly, all the anxiety, all the pain he was feeling, the worry and the heartache, everything lifted off his chest. She had called him James. Not Potter. James. Butterflies were going wild in his stomach. He was so happy it took him a bit longer than necessary to come up with an answer.

"Oh yeah, fell from my broom in the Christmas holidays," he said quickly but unable to contain his smile. "Real tragedy."

He could tell Lily didn't believe him but it didn't matter. She had called him James.

James.