James burst into the infirmary like Lily had done only a few weeks prior. He had run all the way from the dungeons and could barely breathe through his anxiety. Sirius was already laying in a hospital bed near a window and the school nurse was bent over him.

James felt his heart drop inside his chest. He approached the foot of the bed and wrapped his arm around Peter's shoulders. Sirius looked barely conscious and there was an empty vial of Sleeping Draught on the bedside side table.

"What happened to him?" asked Madam Pomfrey, without even turning to the two boys.

James found himself incapable to say a word, the knot in his throat growing bigger each second he spent looking at his friend. Sirius looked so pale.

"He was attacked by a dog," said Peter quickly. "Big black dog, dragged him down the stairs."

If the nurse was skeptical about that answer, she didn't let it show. She nodded gravely and pushed Sirius's hair out of his face in a maternal gesture.

"Poor lamb. I will be sure to mention this to Dumbledore. There should not be such a dangerous animal on school grounds, this is unacceptable."

Impressed by Peter's quick thinking, James nodded seriously. This excuse was actually believable. Sirius's dog form had been spotted multiple times in the past year and had become a bit of a myth amongst students. This had a lot to do with Sirius taking great pleasure in leaving paw prints in places where a dog shouldn't logically have access to, and eating the homework of people he didn't like.

"He's gonna be okay, right?" asked Peter. Grateful, James squeezed his shoulder. He was still incapable to speak but he desperately needed an answer to this question.

"I would like to keep him all day and possibly over night, depending on how his rib heals," answered the nurse. "I'm sorry boys, I know this isn't what you want to hear. Especially since your other friend, Mr. Lupin isn't feeling so great himself."

Absent-mindedly, she looked across the room, where a bed was surrounded by drawn curtains. James felt like crying. The curtains were usually always open after a full moon. In that moment, the drawn curtains felt like a closed casket.

Thinking about Remus finally gave James enough strength to push through the knot in his throat.

"How is he?" he asked, and his voice cracked.

The nurse finished tucking Sirius into bed and turned to James for the first time since he had arrived. Her eyes widened with shock.

"What happened to your face?" she said, rushing to his side and forcefully tilting up his chin.

Alarmed, Peter almost broke his neck to see James' face, and stepped away from him with a horrified expression.

James suddenly remembered his busted lip and the warm blood dripping down his face onto his robes. He had been so worried about his friends he had forgotten about his own pain.

"I fell," he grumbled, gently pushing the nurse away. "I'm fine."

Madam Pomfrey drew her wand and wordlessly repaired his split lip and cleaned the blood off his face and clothes.

"You four certainly have a talent for trouble," she sighed. "I don't know how it still manages to surprise me, after all these years."

"How is Moony?" repeated James, louder this time. He didn't have the energy to protest and tell her how unfair the whole situation was. They didn't deserve to spend so much time in the infirmary, they didn't deserve to spend so much time in pain, and they certainly did not want to.

"Mr. Lupin is fine. He's had a tough night but for now he just needs some rest. The same goes for Mr. Black," she added before James could even ask. "Now, I know you are worried about your friends but you do have classes to attend. You can both come by and visit them at lunch, but I'm afraid you cannot stay here."

Her tone was severe and would accept no rebuttal. She looked tired, James noticed. But then again, everyone looked tired these days. The war was taking a toll on everybody, the young like the old, the scared like the brave.

James decided to leave before she changed her mind entirely and tried to keep him all day. The pain in his lip was completely gone. Following Peter, he turned to the doors then stopped dead in his tracks. Lily was leaning against a pillar near the exit.

"Hey," she said quietly.

James shook off the surprise and walked past her through the great wooden doors before immobilizing in the middle of the empty hallway. Lily followed him and stopped a few feet away from him, staring at him intensely. Peter, made visibly uncomfortable by the entire situation, squirmed next to James.

"I need to get to Charms," he said quickly, and left without looking back. His precipitated footsteps echoed in the quiet corridor.

James didn't move. He didn't know what to say to Lily, he didn't know why she was here. But he knew that he would never be able to take back what he had said to her last. And he was not ready to deal with the consequences.

"Skipping class, Potter?" she asked, with a half-smile. She looked amused more than anything.

"As if you were not doing exactly the same thing, Evans."

Far from looking embarrassed, Lily tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. She was breathtaking.

"Why are you here?" James continued. He still couldn't make sense of her presence in the infirmary and he didn't know what she had heard. Madam Pomfrey had the incredible advantage to not ask many questions, but Lily was too curious not to link everything together.

She could be their downfall, James realized, and suddenly it was hard to breathe. Maybe it wouldn't be Snape that would turn them in after all.

"I followed you," she answered in a steady voice. She was looking straight at him and James was forced to avert his gaze to quiet down his heart.

"Why?"

"We were..." started Lily. She frowned and titled her head, trying to get him to look at her. "We were talking. You kinda ran away. Besides, you forgot this."

She stepped closer to him and handed him his wand. Their fingers brushed slightly when James took it back from her, and he couldn't help but notice that it looked a lot like she had done it on purpose. She was still holding Snape's wand in her other hand, which reassured James a little. She trusted him more than she did her ex-best friend and that had to mean something.

"I didn't run away," said James, but his voice rang weak even in his ears. "I needed to know Sirius was okay."

"See, that's interesting," said Lily, taking another step forward. "How did you know he was hurt? He left way before you did, but you still went straight from the dungeons to the hospital wing."

"Instinct."

James took a step back. Lily didn't look convinced by his answer and he couldn't blame her. There was a worried crease in between her eyebrows and she was staring at James as if she was trying to read his thoughts.

"Why can't you tell me?" she asked quietly. "Does it have anything to do with Remus?"

James felt the blood drain from his face. She knew. How could she not? He inhaled shakily and took another step back.

"No! No, of course not! Remus is just sick. Stomach bug or something."

"Right." Lily had a sad smile. Her eyes didn't bear their usual light. James tried to guess what she was thinking because there was nothing else for him to do. Maybe she was starting to realize that a messy haired boy in askew glasses wasn't worth her time. Or maybe she was just tired of being lied to.

"Are they gonna be okay?" she asked, but to James, too caught up in his anxiety, it felt more like a formality than a question awaiting an answer.

He nodded slowly. And he tried to say yes, he really did. He tried to say they would be fine, that they would be out and about in no time. But the words wouldn't come out of his mouth.

He remembered the disgruntled sounds in the forest and the terror of the stag and the dark. He remembered the yelps of pain the wolf had let out, just hours ago in the dead of night, and he remembered how the floor boards in the Shack had soaked up Sirius's blood. He could not unsee the way the pain had tore through his friends. No matter how hard he tried, the images were stuck in his brain.

He tried to say they would be okay but he didn't believe it. How could he? Sirius had looked so small in that hospital bed, and the curtains drawn around Remus had felt like tape around a crime scene.

It took him a while to realize he was crying. They were not okay, none of them were. How could they be, when death hovered above England, above their families and their lives? They would die. They would all die. Not today nor tomorrow, but they would. How many chances did they have to survive an endless war that had caused so many deaths already?

It took him a while to realize he was kneeling on the floor. Nothing felt real, not even the ground under him. Nothing felt real but his thoughts, his incredibly real and vivid thoughts, and the blood on his hands, the blood on his hands he could not see but he could feel, Sirius's blood fell from in between his fingers and no matter how hard he scraped his hands together the blood, the very real blood, would not go.

He couldn't tell what was real. If the heart-wrenching howling of the wolves was inside his head or echoing in the hallway.

He felt like he was falling. He tried to breathe but the air was not traveling all the way to his lungs. The fear was suffocating him.

There was an echo inside his head. A voice softer than his own.

They will be okay. You're okay. Everything is okay.

It took him a while to realize that Lily was talking to him. That her arms were wrapped around him. His face was buried in her hair and he focused on her warm embrace until the panic settled inside his chest. The smell of apples brought him back to reality.

Lily was stroking his hair gently, whispering words and promises. He didn't know how long it had been, but his eyes hurt from crying. He pulled away from her and wiped a tear with his sleeve.

He would have been mortified if he was not so afraid. His hands were still shaking.

"Are you okay?" whispered Lily, keeping her hands on his shoulders.

James nodded faintly and leaned forward again, pressing his forehead against hers. They were too close, they were way too close but for once James didn't care. She soothed his racing heart. Her touch made him breath again. She was the sunlight that parted his clouds and nothing in the world was warmer than her palms on his cheeks, wiping his tears.

"They will be okay. Everything is okay," she repeated.

James nodded again. She was right. Like always. Her words eased a pain that had been burning inside him for too long.

"Thank you, Evans," he whispered.

"Any time, Potter."

Her words were drowned in the sound of the bell, and before they could even move, the hallway filled with students. Before anyone could see them, so close together on the cold stone ground, they both jumped to their feet. Lily smoothed her skirt and James tried his hardest to look like he hadn't been crying, but no one really looked at them. Everyone was too caught up in their own preoccupations to pay attention to two blushing teenagers.

Everyone, at the exception of one boy, standing still in a sea of students. Snape was looking straight at them, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles were white. The hatred in his eyes pierced through James skull. They looked at each other for a fraction of second, and suddenly he was gone.