I know I've been away forever and a day, but here's a big juicy one. I'm not telling you what the scene below is like I usually do, it'll ruin the surprise.

"James, is that you?" Lily asked, rubbing absently at her swelling stomach in the kitchen as she stirred the pot.

They'd both heard the door close, but when no response came Lily looked up and around in surprise, still finding just Remus in the room with her. They shared an uneasy look, and though it may have been paranoia, they both reached absently for their wands. They all knew better than to try and sneak up on each other, especially Lily.

Remus set the paper aside and got to his feet, his hand casually in his pocket as he crept towards the front door where they still couldn't hear any such noise. Lily trailed a few paces behind, one hand curled instinctively around her abdomen, the other holding firmly to her own wand; prepared to curse any intruder in her house or her husband for freaking her out, preferably the second.

The two stepped into the living room, but their unease didn't lessen one bit as they took him in.

The good news, it was James.

The part that still had their wands trained on him, he wasn't acting like James. He was blinking around the living room with a passive look on his face, like someone studying a new place with disinterest. He hardly acknowledged their entrance, and when his eyes did trail over to them, he only got a vague sort of smile on his face.

"Prongs?" Remus asked carefully, still standing protectively in front of Lily and clearly not looking to move an inch.

He didn't respond, instead his hand began lazily moving towards where he kept his wand, and Remus shouted, "get down," even as he lunged towards his friend.

Lily bolted behind the couch even as a red streak of light went smashing into her husband, knocking him to the floor as he was stunned.

The two stayed tensed for several more moments, until Remus began edging towards him and Lily muttered several spells to make sure no one else could get into this house until further notice.

Remus did a few spells over James, and he came back to Lily's side now looking almost murderous as he helped her to her feet. She tried to get out around a clogged throat, "is that-"

"It's James," he got out through gritted teeth, as this seemed to be a large spot of his ire. "Imperiused is my best guess." He couldn't deny that their was almost relief in his voice as well, better to have the real James here, alive, and safe than Merlin knew where doing they didn't want to know what to him somewhere else and an imposter doing this.

"Oh." That was all Lily could seem to get out as she pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, watching him lay motionless on the floor. He'd just stepped out to go to Peter's house, what on earth could have happened between there and coming back?

"I need to send word to Dumbledore," Remus placed a comforting hand on her shoulder to keep her attention. "I doubt he's learned how to break the curse since our last meeting, but he should still be told what's going on. We'll keep him stunned until then, yeah?"

Lily gave a sharp bob of her head, her mind still flying with too many horrible possibilities of what James could have been sent here to do.

It seemed to take years, though it was probably only minutes. Remus was pacing in between the couple, as he clearly wanted to stay at James side but refused to leave Lily, who'd adamantly protested against leaving the room. They had no idea what was taking Dumbledore so long to respond, and just leaving James on the floor like that seemed to be keeping them both on their edge.

It was as his heel was turning for another pass did Lily barely have time to screech, "Remus, watch out-"

The stunner had worn off, and James surged to his feet with hardly a bat of an eye and belayed the wand this time, his hands going right for his friends throat with that glazed over look.

Remus reacted like any man would, his first instinct to reach up and try to pry the fingers away, struggling with all his might to wrestle out of the grip, but even as Lily watched she could see the conflict as his wand dithered, some base part of him still unwilling to curse his friend off of him.

Lily raised her own wand, but she couldn't get a clean shot without possibly hitting Remus, and were his lips turning blue, but then James gasped as loud as Remus did when his hands fell away, he staggered back shaking his head, and then he fell back to the floor, sobbing.

Remus didn't seem to notice, or care, that he was rubbing at his throat as he staggered over to him, whispering, "James, Prongs are you-"

"I'm sorry," he gasped, huddling tight into himself and still trying to keep away from both of them. "I, I've never felt anything like that. I swear, I didn't mean, but I did, and-"

"It's alright dear," Lily murmured, ignoring his protest of trying to shove her away, managing to duck under his arm and keep herself at his side. "We know, it's going to be okay."

"We know you didn't mean it," Remus promised, though James still couldn't even begin to look at him, as the area around his throat was already starting to darken with a bruise. "We're all going to make it through this war James, I promise."

James buried his face in his wife's hair, but somehow Remus' words managed to begin to slow his shaking.

If you like reading the books type fanfics, Bookhater95 has a really good series. He, or she I've never asked, is partway through the fourth book and shows no signs of stopping. A lot of these moments you've been reading in this series are small moments that author has thrown into their reading series, and with permission I elaborated on them.