November came, bringing cold, though not biting, weather. It also brought an onslaught of hard Quidditch training for the Gryffindor team. James had become captain the year previous and was determined to win the Cup this year, unlike the last, due to unfortunate last minute replacements for players with injuries. (It was still debated as to whether these injuries were Slytherin-induced.) This meant three training sessions a week, leaving the team exhausted, but still playing admirably.

December brought Gryffindor's first match, and it was against Hufflepuff. Although Hufflepuff had not won the Cup in eight years, it was rumored that Amos Diggory had put together quite a good team this year, and James was determined not to let that team beat his own, even for one match.

"All right, team. We're good and we know it and the rest of the school knows it, so let's get out there and kick some Hufflepuff arse!" he roared fiercely, and the girls on the team all giggled before recovering and heading out to the field. A sea of spectators met their eyes and James felt that familiar rush. There was no doubt about it -- this was going to be a great game.

Ten minutes into the game, James was still as confident as he had been surveying the onlookers.

"Gryffindor leading thirty to ten with Hufflepuff in possession. Marsh passes to Mulch, Mulch speeds towards the goalpost....Watson intercepts -- passes to Potter -- Diggory lets it by, and Gryffindor scores!" The Ravenclaw fourth year Gwenog Jones was commentating as usual.

James soared around the pitch, feeling better about the game than ever. His mind and sight were clear; he was certain that they would win this match.

Two Hufflepuff scorings and three Gryffindor scorings later, they did. Gryffindor's Keeper Lisa Ketching caught the Snitch, ending the game after thirty-four minutes and eight seconds.

"And Gryffindor wins the match, 210 points to thirty!" Gwenog Jones screamed as the crowd erupted. The Gryffindor team sank down to the ground, and James in turn hugged each and every one of them. He felt as though they had already won the Cup, Lily Evans was his girlfriend, and Severus Snape had just been turned into a dung beetle.

Sirius, Remus, and Peter had left the pitch as soon as the match had been won to make a quick trip to Hogsmeade and get party supplies, as was planned. This didn't bother James a bit. There were plenty of other people to be around and plenty of other things to do while waiting. The Gryffindor team changed out of their Quidditch robes and screamed excitedly and nonsensically for a bit, until they headed up to the common room where most of the members of their House had already congregated. For a while there was a lot of talking, laughing, and congratulating, until the three Marauders that had been missing returned with huge amounts of food and drink. The Gryffindors went wild, and proceeded to party heartily.

"Great job, mate," Sirius said, smiling at James. Peter and Remus agreed wholeheartedly. James grinned in reply as he scanned the common room.

"She's not here," Sirius said quietly, as though reading his mind. James furrowed his brow.

"Why wouldn't she be? Everyone's here."

"She might turn up later," Peter said, attempting to console his friend.

"She doesn't want to see you. Something about the sight of your gloating and hair-tussling making her too sick to join the party right now," Remus said, smiling almost sympathetically.

James frowned. "That's absurd. I only gloat a reasonable amount. Seriously, mates, why doesn't she like me? What've I done to make her so angry all the time?"

"It's more the fact that you exist, if you know what I mean," Sirius said, a hint of a smile on his lips, and James was forcibly reminded of fifth year by the lake.

"That's not good enough," he said testily. "Who are you to tell me why she doesn't like me?" The fact that Sirius was only answering a question James had asked was irrelevant to him. Why did he always get so defensive when dealing with Evans, anyway?

Sirius shrugged. "I don't know what to make you do, mate," he said. "Find yourself a girl that actually enjoys your company. C'mon, just choose any of them. There are plenty. Not as many as what I could have, but not too shabby either."

James snorted. "I wouldn't touch half of the girls you choose," he said.

Sirius smirked. "You don't touch any of the girls I choose, Prongs."

Peter laughed appreciatively and even Remus couldn't help but smile at that. James, keeping his dignity, gave Sirius a look and went off in search of a girl to chat with. Any one of them would do, so long as Evans came in and saw.

Lily made her appearance around eight that night. James glanced up from his talking with his two Chaser teammates and saw her drinking a butterbeer and talking with her friend Alice. James strutted over to her.

"Hey, Lily," he said, edging his shoulder in front of Alice so that she was no longer part of the conversation.

Lily looked at him, and her upper lip curled.

"See the match today?" James continued as though he did not notice this less than affectionate response.

Lily continued to glare at him.

"Are you like most girls, Lily? Like to see a guy in their Quidditch robes?"

"Potter, I'm warning you," she said, her voice low and deadly.

James ruffled his hair and looked at her. "I'd skip a ride on a broomstick any day to take a ride with you." Pricky but suave, he thought. Not to mention incredibly overdone, but that was its charm. Besides, he was James Potter. He could take the most incredibly mundane things, say them to a girl, and make them throw their knickers off.

"Potter, you arsehole!" Lily shrieked, and threw her butterbeer at his face -- not just the liquid inside, but the bottle as well. The bottle connected with his forehead loudly and painfully, and the butterbear drenched his robes.

"What the hell was that for?" he snarled, although he was perfectly aware of her reasoning.

She gave him a look of disbelief before taking out her wand. "Do me a favor and leave me alone. I don't want to see you, talk to you, listen to you, or even hear from a stranger a joke that your father's cousin's great-step-aunt told them in passing. I want you to go away and leave me the hell alone."

"Evans--" he started. He hoped nobody was staring. A quick glance around proved they were.

"Leave me alone," she repeated. "I swear I'll curse if you don't go now."

James almost took out his wand and blasted her to the ground. He was angry at her beautiful fiery green eyes for locking in his gaze. He was mad at her ringing voice for making his ears drink in her words. He wanted to break her lovely soft hands for holding the wand that might curse him. He just wanted to take her whole annoying body and snog her till she couldn't breathe.

But he didn't curse her or snog her. He merely looked into her eyes -- it was hard for him not to do so -- and inclined his head slightly. Politely. Then he gave her a little smirk and went over to the boy's staircase to change robes.

"Bad luck, Prongs," he heard Peter mutter to him sympathetically as he crossed the common room. He didn't turn around; he was fully aware of all the people staring at him.

When he got back downstairs, he found the party had again resumed. He went over to Alice to see where Lily had gone.

"She was seething. Went straight to the dormitory," Alice said, a somewhat sympathetic look on her face. "What you said was rather rude, though, even if you didn't really mean it," she added reproachfully. James looked away uncomfortably. "Yeah, I know," he at last said gruffly. "Should I apologize, d'you think?" Alice didn't speak for a moment. She looked out at the party going on. James was about to ask her the question again when she turned to face him. "The thing about Lily," she said quietly, "Is that she doesn't hate you." James nearly fell to the ground in shock. "The emphasis being on the word 'you'," she attached quickly. "She just...can't you tell she's scared, James?"

Another shocker. "What are you on about?" he asked her, feeling quite dazed.

Alice looked away again, trying to find the right words. "She hates how you act, sure -- the way you do cruel things to people just because you can." James was about to protest, but she cut him off. "I think Lily knows there's another side to you, deep down there, and she just doesn't want to admit that. I also think that she's dead scared that you're jerking her around. She thinks you're playing some elaborate game where you toy with her emotions. You know, almost to the point where she falls for the game, and then you give her a slap in the face."

"I am not!" he cried indignantly.

"Well, Lily doesn't know that, see," Alice said patiently. "And she's not ever going to know that if you keep acting like you are now."

There was a spell of silence.

"So, yes, apologizing to her would be the best thing to do, but don't expect anything," Alice said quietly. James nodded at her. "Thanks," he said, and she nodded at him with a small smile and went up to the girl's dormitory.

x x x

After a whole long night of ranting about the obscene James Potter, Lily woke up feeling better than she had the previous night. Vesta had gone upstairs with her and they had talked him over for awhile, until Lily was able to go to sleep. Vesta and Alice were extremely objective people -- they took everything into consideration, and made fully thought-out decisions. Renee was the most blunt of any of them, and often reacted on impulse rather than thinking things through. Lily tended to think the same as Renee, except it always seemed to get Lily into more trouble than her.

The four girls had Charms that morning as well as Potions, and they had Friday afternoon off. They figured they would spend the afternoon trying to finish all the work they had been given for the winter holidays, which started the following day.

"I'm staying here," Lily said without hesitation. The girls had just come back from their lunch, and were ready as they'd ever be to start work. "My parents don't want me to because they haven't seen me in so long, but they know just as well as I do that I'll go mad if I'm at home for two weeks, hearing my sister coo over her lovely fiancé and the bloody wedding." Vesta laughed. "I'm staying here, too. I thought about it, and I don't want to keep you here alone." Lily started to protest, but Vesta shook her head. "Don't worry about it," she said. "I'm home for the summer holidays, after all. Not only that, but I've already signed up."

"I'm going home," Renee announced. "I know Hogwarts is great at Christmas because so few people are here and there's more freedom, but my parents really want me to see them." Alice nodded. "Same with mine. Plus, I won't mind going somewhere else for a change."

There was a lapse into silence before Lily said listlessly, "I suppose we should start on all this work."

The other three nodded their agreement and stared at their schoolbags.

"There's a lot of it," Vesta said unhappily.

More nods. After a few more minutes of nothing productive, Renee shook her head. "This is ridiculous," she pronounced. "It's never going to get done on its own." She grabbed her History of Magic book from her bag and started on a long and tiresome essay that everyone had to finish but nobody seemed to be able to start.
Vesta, Lily, and Alice knew she had a point, however -- it wasn't going to get done on its own. Thus, they took out their own History of Magic books and proceeded to all work on the essay, occasionally throwing out comments, asking each other questions, or seeing what one another wrote.

By the time they were ready to go down for dinner, they had completed all their History of Magic homework for the winter break.

"Only every other class left," grumbled Lily as they took their seats at the Gryffindor table in the great hall. She vaguely noticed the Peter, Remus, James, and Sirius a bit of a ways down the table, all poring over a piece of parchment, but she was too starved to be intrigued. She helped herself to a large helping of chicken. The other girls did the same, ravenous from all the work they had done.

About ten minutes later, when they'd finished the majority of the meal -- Renee and Lily had just started on their pieces of apple pie -- the boys came over and sat near them, for once not looking mischievous or cheerful, but rather ashen-faced and shocked instead.

"What happened?" asked Vesta at once. They could all tell something was up. None of the boys knew where to begin, but eventually James found his voice. "We've got this map, and we were looking at it, and there's -- well, there's something all of you should see."

He pulled out a piece of parchment, and tapped it while muttering something -- Lily didn't quite catch what. Then he handed it to the girls and they proceeded to look it over.

"In the far right corner," Remus said, pointing. "Gryffindor Tower, your dorm."

For a minute nobody spoke. The boys surveyed the girls and the girls looked at the map, hardly believing what it said.

"Are you sure that--" Lily began, but Peter nodded. "The map never lies," he said, looking quite serious.

"Well, hadn't we better go, then?" Alice said. "To our dorm, I mean. To check. Because what if that map thing is telling the truth?" Renee nodded. "We need to make sure, even if this is some prank they're pulling on us."

Lily had been suspecting that too, but Alice was right. They did need to make sure. They hastened away to Gryffindor Tower, leaving their dishes of apple pie half eaten. They took the steps two at a time. Vesta nearly knocked over a first year as she attempted to get off a staircase just as it was about to change. Nobody spoke until they got to the Fat Lady.

"Morium Delicorpis," they all said in unison, and the portrait swung open. They dashed across the common room, went up the staircase, and into their dormitory. Flinging open the door, they pulled back the curtains of a four poster that hadn't been used all year --

The map had been right. Selene Larson was sitting on her old bed.

x x x

A/N: I liked this chapter a lot more than I've liked others I've written. It seemed to fit when I wrote it. Can't quite explain it...Anyway, this is about the in-between updating time it's gonna be from now on, due to me actually having things to do (I'm fainting from shock). The "x x x " is to signify when it's the end of a part of the chapter. It won't let me do the three asterisks for some odd reason. Anyway, much thanks to Rosie eisoR for the great constructive criticism review. Loved it. Also, credit and thanks to The Get Up Kids for the title of this chapter. (I always have such a hard time coming up with chapter titles; it sucks). And sorry about the cliffie, but I happen to like them in moderate dosage. Please review! Thanks.