"Aurora, you have to run, now!"

"What?!"

"Voldemort – he's coming to get you! Go and leave!"

"But Alex, I –

Someone screamed downstairs. A maid was dead.

"Just go on and leave! Don't be stubborn! I'll handle this –

A figure slowly crept up the grand mahogany staircase.

"Alex!"

The man refused to listen to his sister's cries. The Dark Lord was slyly approaching, a triumphant grin placed on his thin, pale lips.

"Go on, RUN!"

Without another look back, the twenty-year-old woman ran for the far end of the corridor, jabbing on a silver ornament that was placed on a wall. In an instant, a portion of the wall vanished as she heard his brother's incantations as flashes of light came visible. The electricity went out. It started to rain — hard.  

And then she heard him whisper.

"Avada Kedavra."

Just as when she hurtled down a set of invisible steps, aiming to reach the wet grass far below, her brother's now lifeless body thumped against the second floor of their Victorian home. She forced herself not to look back, not to see if her older brother was actually dead; for the Dark Lord has retraced her steps and was standing on the edge of the corridor.

"Foolish girl," said the Dark Lord, voice booming over the large lawn. "Where is Sirius Black?"

She dared not to answer, light brown hair matted to her face as she ran towards the woods. She knew where Sirius was, but she would not dare to save her life to betray her lover…betray her friends…

A set of footsteps was now following her at a steady pace. Panting heavily as she tried to evade branches and large roots of the trees, she tried to quicken her steps as she blinked out the rain that was starting to blur her vision.

"Foolish girl," said the Dark Lord yet again. "Your attempts at losing me are futile." His voice was more booming than before. "It is better to let me know where the Secret-Keeper is rather than lose your life."

The woman continued to run. "For me, it is better to lose my life than tell you where he is!"

The Dark Lord grinned slightly at hearing the woman's proclamation. "Very well then," he started, finally standing on the clear path where the woman was running, "If you are no use to me, it is better for you to die. Good bye, Aurora Callaway."

Aurora didn't look back – she just kept on running as she tried to avoid the flash of green light that was hurtling towards her. Trying to think of another way to avoid dying, she thought of Apparition. But Apparition was too risky at the time – now that she was emotionally troubled, she could end up dead anyway. With a dive to the other way, aiming to miss the Killing Curse, a jet of green light blinded her sight and her body fell with a loud thump on the mossy ground, light brown hair scattered like a pool of golden threads…sapphire blue eyes now lost to a mere light gray…

**

"AAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!"

Lily Evans, still a sweet 16-year-old girl, woke up with a jerk as she heard a scream coming from the other room. Bolting up straight from the safety of her duvet, she immediately ran outside to the corridor and headed towards her best friend's room.

"Aurora!" exclaimed Lily, rushing to the side of the huge canopy bed. "Aurora, are you alright?"

With a shake of her head, Aurora looked at Lily with fearful eyes – eyes that Lily only saw for the first time. "Uh…yeah, I'm alright," she denied with a fake smile. "Just…had a nightmare."

The redhead chose not to pry deeper into the situation, for she herself had a strange nightmare. Of her clutching a baby, trying to stop the Dark Lord on murdering her child named 'Harry'.

"So…" Aurora spoke up, voice still cracking. "What…why are you here?"

"I heard you scream, of course. I was just nodding off to sleep right after when the voice inside my head said to me that I was afraid that James would reject me —

Lily immediately covered her mouth as her deep emerald eyes were widened in surprise. She just blurted out something she shouldn't have, and she was now sure Aurora was going to pester her for the whole week until they had to come back to Hogwarts.

"Wait a minute there, Lils," said Aurora, raising her eyebrows in inquiry as she threw back locks of light brown past her shoulder. "Did you just say you were afraid of James rejecting you?"

The redhead shook her head as she continued to cover her mouth. 'Stupid, Lily! Stupid!'

Aurora's sapphire eyes brightened up. "You're afraid of rejection, aren't you?"

The Head Girl once again shook her head.

"Oh c'mon! Lils, James wouldn't do that to you! You're his best friend!"

"But," Lily choked out, still covering her mouth with the palm of her hand. "But what if I wasn't?"

"You ARE his best friend now, right? That's what matters!"

"But what if he treats me just like his picks-of-the-week? Like trash to be thrown out a week later? I don't want that, Aurora," Lily exclaimed. "Because I love him and I want to be with him forever."

Aurora tsk-tsked a few times as she shifted on her bed. "Lils, why don't you go and find out if he loves you? He's not worth of your feelings if he'll just do that…and you're not worthy being treated like trash that waits for garbage day." Sighing longingly and starting to stare out the huge bay window located in her room, the light-brown-haired girl smiled. "You know, Lils, if I was in your position and I really, really love him, with all my heart and soul…it would be heaven for me just to be with him even for a week. You know, just to be with him and feel that he has feelings for me even though he hasn't…just for one week.

It would be practically heaven…" she turned sharply to her best friend. "I don't know about you though…I think you'd probably think otherwise, but hey, I'm not that voice in your head."

Lily and Aurora giggled. She had a point.

*

"Aww…poor puppy, all sad that his master's gone…"

Sirius glared at Remus as the pale-haired boy sat beside him. "And what does that mean?"

"You've been looking so lonely ever since Aurora left," Remus said in a matter-of-factly tone, as if it was a fact that the whole world knew. "Looking like a lost little puppy…"

"You'd want me to fight with you then?" Sirius asked threateningly, grabbing a cushion.

"Oh no," Remus said mockingly. "Our fights would have no meaning unless I was Aurora. Then you'd feel so joyous that she's back, feeling so happy that she'd be here to glare the glare you love, and then she'd be saying —

"'Oh Sirius, I missed you so much!'" James suddenly burst out, mocking a girl's voice as he and Remus started to snigger. Remus Lupin's monthly, weeklong absences were over and he was back, alive at the Gryffindor Tower.

Sirius grabbed another cushion and threw them both at his best friends' direction. "Some friends you are!"

James pulled the scarlet pillow out of his face. "Oh yeah, we are," said he, readjusting his glasses. "You want us to be better friends? We'll be happy to tell Aurora that you love her."

Sirius threw another pillow at him. "You seriously have a problem. So, what's happening with Lily?" Sirius asked in a teasing manner. Remus, meanwhile, groaned in exasperation at Sirius's utter stupidity at mentioning Lily once again. Here James will rant…in 3…2…1…

"SHE'S NOT WRITING YET!" James screamed, not caring if anybody was around, for nobody was. "I just can't believe she's ignoring me! What did I do, anyway? I already sent Apollo to her like 5 times yesterday and 3 times today and she's still not writing to me! Did I do something wrong? Am I too persistent? I just want to talk to her —she's my best friend! Is it a crime then, to ask a few questions? I suppose it's not a crime if I asked how well she was doing, if she received my Christmas present, if she's all right —

Padfoot cut him off. "It will be a crime if she thinks you're stalking her."

"I'm not stalking her!"

"Then why don't you just wait for her to come back and talk to her by then?" Remus suggested, raising his brown eyes towards the unruly haired boy.

"Good idea, Moony! But I can't wait that long!"

"Then do," said Sirius. "Or else me and Moony will kill you if you keep ranting about it."

*

"My god Lils, what ARE these?"

As Aurora stepped into the guest room, tons of parchment was strewn across the desks and the sofa – and James's eagle owl Apollo was perched on a windowsill, staring curiously at Lily with its huge, circular brown eyes. Lily was seated in the center of the room, twirling a clean quill and seemed to be thinking if she'll answer to James's queries.

"James's letters," said Lily simply, as if it was no matter at all.

"How come you're not answering them?" Aurora asked.

Lily glared at her. "I'm still unsure of what to do – some side of me wants to hook up with him even for a mere week, but another tells me I shouldn't relate myself to him – said I'd only be trashed and everything…"

"So you're what, going to ignore him until you decide on what to do?" Aurora asked, taking a few Owl Treats from Lily's birdcage and feeding it to Apollo.

"Yep, that's basically my plan."

Aurora sighed. "Whatever suits you, Lils…"

*

James was already ready to pull out his hair. He was absolutely frustrated by now – he hated having friends who don't talk to you at all – and he really needed to talk to Lily for relief. It was already the date of arrival for those students who went home for Christmas, and the beautiful redhead wasn't in sight.

"Oh god, where is she, where is she…?" James chanted over and over again, scanning the crowd of Hogwarts students that passed them by in the Entrance Hall. As his hazel eyes searched the throng for a certain redhead, Remus and Sirius, plus Peter now, sighed.

"You seem to be getting blinder everyday, my friend," Sirius stated, pointing at a pair of Gryffindor girls who were starting up the marble staircase. "There she is."

James's hazel eyes brightened up at the sight of his best friend, and due to that happiness, he started to push through the crowd to catch up with her.

"Lils! Hey Lils! Over here!" he desperately waved, running up the staircase as the rest of the Marauders ran behind him.

Aurora was the first one to look down. "Oh hi James! How are you?" she asked kindly.

"Fine," said James, finally trotting beside his best friend. "Except that someone," he coughed loudly towards the redhead beside him, "…Kept on not answering my letters. Mind explaining that to me?"

"We were busy, to put it simply," said Lily, avoiding eye contact. She tried to move ahead of the group but a hand tried to back her down.

"Are you mad at me, Lils?" James asked quietly, although Lily could understand him quite clearly through the crowd.

Lily didn't answer – she simply turned away and walked right up the staircase without another word, making James worry about the situation a bit more.

*

"God, I…just…don't know what I did…"

Remus raised his eyes from his History of Magic essay, twirling his quill between his fingers. With his honey-brown eyes holding the expression of concern, he spoke up. "Why don't you just try to talk to her?"

"I did!" James said, starting to pace across the space they had in the common room. "I did, I did, I did, and she STILL doesn't talk to me! Ever since she came back from home, she's been treating me like this! And it's been like what," He ticked off fingers. "Two weeks!"

"Honestly, Prongs," said Sirius from the other side of the couch, stopping his writing of his star chart, "If you're that worried about her, why don't you try finding her right now to sort things out?"

James looked curiously at him. "Where the hell did you get that from?"

Sirius stared blankly at him. "Get what?"

Opting not to complicate the matter, Prongs bid goodnight and started to wander around in his Invisibility Cloak, nose buried in a tattered piece of parchment called the Marauder's Map.

*

James continued on walking down the corridor, tattooing the fact that Lily was in the Astronomy Tower in his head. Clutching the map, a lamp, and the Cloak was quite a task, so he decided to go with the lamp and the Cloak instead.

He turned his head sideways – the Astronomy tower was quite far away from where he was. It would take a chore for him to find that passage that led to the Astronomy Tower right away since the trigger was a certain block of cobblestone. It wouldn't even help if he opted to run, since his footsteps would alert the caretaker and he'd end up in detention, not finding Lily.

Setting his pace into a quicker one, Prongs sighed and continued on walking, hazel eyes set on a set of intricately designed glass doors on the end of the corridor. He knew she was there – she always was whenever she had trouble.

The night breeze began to blow past her unwavering figure, making strands of perfect auburn dance with the wind as it left her quickly as it came. Little snow continued to fall, producing lumps of ice surrounding the 16-year-old girl, glittering in the pale moonlight. Telescopes were covered in snow as stars in the dark sky glimmered beautifully, shining like pale diamonds sewn into dark fabric.

She sighed, digging her face into her gloved hands. She knew it would be cold, so she prepared herself for the cold, dressing warmly and thickly. She'd been sitting like that for more than an hour, thoughts seemingly swimming around her head, refusing to leave her at peace. With the winter wind whipping her hair, making tendrils fly gracefully off her shoulders, Lily Evans sighed again.

Lily always liked being alone in the Astronomy Tower – it always gave her peace of mind whenever she came here alone and troubled. Her mind would sort things itself as she thought about them in peace, in solitude.

But today was absolutely different. Her mind couldn't sort things itself for she herself had trouble thinking about her thoughts in peace. Her heart always thumped wildly against her ribcage whenever she thought of what to do – it was all too much for her to bear.

'God…why did it have to be him…? Why did I have to fall in love with someone as…' Lily thought hard for a perfect word – one that didn't insult too much, one that didn't praise too much. '…stupid as him?'

Suddenly, she straightened up, deep emerald eyes widened in alert. She looked around the tower, eager to find someone for something moved – and she found the glass doors slightly ajar.

"Who's there?" Lily asked quietly, brushing off a few tears that decided to fall at that minute. Stupid James Potter.

No one was in plain sight, but a deep, angelic voice answered her query. "I am," the voice said, and a gloved hand grabbed the ends of a silver cloth and pulled it away. The sturdy form of James Potter materialized in front of her, taking her by surprise.

But he was taken aback too, for she was crying.

Tearstains were visible on her cheeks.

And her beautiful emerald eyes were absolutely bloodshot.

"What…what are you doing here?"

Why You Annoy Me: Part 5

Author's notes: Hope you liked: please R&R! And also, to a reviewer (so sorry, I forgot your name ^^;), you can use the two way mirror just as long you say that it was my idea. ^^ Thank you!

I just noticed that there were stories, named 'The Pest' and 'The Things We Do', made by the author halona that used the name 'Aurora'. I just want to make it clear that I did not copy her character and that I based my character on my imagination. I named her after the goddess of dawn, and her second name after the Muse of tragedy. 

Please, r&R!

P.S: Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and all its characters, names, places and events. I only own the characters you do not recognize, ex. Aurora Callaway, Divina McKeller, James's owl Apollo, etc…