As the Slytherins and even some of the Gryffindors snickered (after all, it did take real talent to explode a cauldon when making a draught of peace, you really had to work at it to screw it up that badly), James, about to reply with something nasty, caught Lily's eye and seemed to deflate. He hunched his shoulders and tried to walk off, ignoring their taunts. Sirius and Remus shared a bemused look but followed his lead, not sure why James had decided not to take issue with Rabastan.
Instead of confusing Rabastan, James' action only made him very angry. Pulling out his wand, he pointed it at James and hissed, "How dare you walk away from me, blood traitor. Or are you too stupid to know when you are being called out?" As James continued to ignore him, Rabastan looked around the hall, not quite certain what to do with someone who wouldn't even try to fight back with words. "Come back here, you coward!"
Slipping through the crowd, Lily came up beside James and tentatively brushed his hand with hers. As he glanced at her, startled, she whispered very quietly, "I am sorry that I laughed at you." Before she could say another word, Rabastan yelled something from behind them, and James, acting on instinct alone, dropped to the floor, dragging Lily down with him. The wall behind where they were walking turned an interesting shade of neon pink when the spell hit it and the two of them stared at each other for a second before Lily drew herself to her knees with a growl of anger. "Rabastan Lestrange, that is bloody well enough!" She shouted, ripping her wand out of her pocked and rising to her feet, glaring at the Slytherin the entire time. Pointing her wand at Rabastan, Lily approached, fury evident in her every movement, "That's twenty points from Slytherin."
"Why don't you shut the hell up, Evans?" Rabastan sneered back when Lily paused to glare at him, evidently trying to cow him with the threat of loosing points. Raising his wand, Rabastan glanced at Snape quickly before turning his attention back to Lily, muttering a particularly nasty curse that he had learned from Snape thier first year, aiming, not at Lily, but at James.
Divining Rabastan's intent, the entire hall erupted into chaos as soon as the spell was cast. Students scrambled in all directions, trying to get out of the hall before a real wizard's duel erupted before their very eyes. James muttered a curse and tried to throw a shielding charm about Lily even as Peter struggled to get his wand out, Sirius and Remus cast two different counter hexes at Rabastan, and Lily, being no one's fool, tried to drop back down to the ground. A spell caught her in mid drop, she had jumped right into it's path, and it slammed her into James, hard enough to drive them both back into the wall of the hallway.
"Lily, oh God, Lily, be okay. Please be okay." James knelt down beside Lily's motionless body in the hallway outside the Potions classroom, with Sirius and Remus flanking him. Shaking with fright, James patted Lily's cheeks, trying to get her to wake up from the spell that had knocked her out. The Slytherins had already cleared out, apparently frightened by the way Lily looked when that spell hit her. Running a tremouring hand through his hair, James kept calling her name, begging for her to wake up.
Looking down at his best friend, Sirius kept one eye on the hallway, hoping that Peter would be back with the school nurse quickly. "I hope Peter doesn't get lost," he said in an aside to Remus, who was watching the other side of the hall for any returning Slytherins, "she doesn't look too good."
Remus only shook his head, not bothering to respond in a verbal fashion. The tension he was under showed only in the whiteness of his knuckles of the hand clenching his wand, other than that, he might as well of been made of stone. Shock took him like that.
The sounds of running footsteps coming from the direction they had sent Peter caused three heads to snap up, wands raised at the ready, until they caught sight of the school nurse, with Peter bringing up the rear. Without a word, the nurse dropped down beside Lily, shoved James uncerimoniously out of the way, and reached for a pulse. Finding it fluttering under her fingertips, the nurse loosened Lily's blouse and snapped over her shoulder, "What happened?"
The force of the nurse's shove had sent James sprawling but he was still the first one to answer as he got to his feet. "Lily got in the way of a spell or two. I am not sure which one actually hit her." He scuffed the flagstones with his shoe, trying not to meet the nurse's eye, "She was just trying to do her job as a Prefect."
Bringing out her own wand, the nurse sketched a couple of arcane symbols in the air and a stretcher appeared under Lily, lifting her prone body into the air. "Which spell hit her?" The nurse demanded, only to snort in disgust as the four boys shook their heads, they honestly did not know which one it was, "Alright then, who cast it?"
James, Sirius and Remus shared a look but it was James that actually responded, "We aren't sure." He was lying, the nurse knew it and he knew she knew it, "There were too many people in the hall for us to get a good look."
The nurse stared at him for a long second before the sound of Lily's moan reached her ears, "The three of you better get to your next class," she said evenly, "I will take Miss Evans to the hospital wing. If I were the four of you, I would keep my nose clean for a very long while. You can probably come see her after dinner." With that rather obscure warning, the nurse walked down the hall, the stretcher following her like an obediant dog.
As soon as the nurse was out of earshot, James leaned back against the wall and sighed, "God, do I hate lying." Glancing at his friends, James rubbed his head where he had bumped it, not sure which time he had gone to the floor that he sustained the injury, "I guess we better do what she said, we are already going to be in enough trouble as it is over this."
The four of them hurried off to their next class, just making it to their seats as the professor entered the room. Thankfully, they were in Charms with Hufflepuff and the ensuing chaos that was Charms allowed them to have a hasty conference in the back of the room. Remus was the first one to speak, a strange light glinting in his eyes, "Why didn't you tell the nurse that it was that Ratbastard that cursed Lily, James?"
James glanced down at the floor, then up at the ceiling, as if looking for an answer to the question himself, "I don't know." He finally said, a triffle sheepishly, "I mean, it's not her problem that we can't get the Slytherins to leave us alone." Almost as if he was reading the protest forming in Remus' mind, James added hastily, "I know that the Ratbastard crossed a line, with Snivilus looking on like usual, but, I don't know, what if we started a school enquiry if we tattled? I mean, the four of us aren't exactly saints, you know?"
With a rather odd expression on his face, Sirius nodded, in complete accord with James, "He is right, you know. Just think what would happen to us if they found the map, for example." Or the other thing the three of us have been working on, he thought very quietly to himself, "I mean, I know I sometimes give the appearance of not giving a rat's ass about this place...
"Hey, who are you..." Peter, who had just barely been paying attention, caught the word rat and chimed in until James stepped on his foot, hard, with a meaningful look in his eyes. Peter flushed guiltily and shut his mouth, turning back to watch the professor demonstrate the wand movement again.
Sirius continued speaking urbanly, as if he had never been interupted at all, "because I don't care if my mother ever makes good on her threats and tries to pull me home. Note that I did say tried, there, she would have a real fight on her hands if she came here with that intention." Sirius ran a hand through his hair, thinking about what he wanted to say, "The point I am trying to make is that I don't want to get thrown out of Hogwarts, especially not for something that the adults don't need to know about. I mean, who is to say that we even get a fair hearing? The map alone is enough to get us expelled, no questions asked."
Remus nodded slowly, "Alright, I can see that." He said finally, not looking to happy with himself for agreeing to this course of non action, "But, still, we have to do something about this or it is just going to get worse. I mean, it's bad enough that Lily is in the hospital because of us, indirectly at least. The only thing is that I have no idea what to do other than tell Dumbledore." His shoulders slumped slightly as he thought that option through, "And that would serve nothing than getting us all expelled."
"Don't worry, mate." Sirius said, punching Remus lightly on the arm, "We aren't the Mauraders for nothing. We will figure something out."
Later that night, at dinner, James received a note from the school nurse stating that Lily would be up for visitors as soon as dinner was over. He wasn't sure if he wanted Sirius, Remus, and Peter there, not after what Lily whispered to him in the hallway before the Ratbastard knocked her out, but the decision was removed from his hands when Sirius snatched the note from his hands. The four of them traipsed upstairs to the infirmary as soon as dinner was finsihed, not sure of what they were going to find there.
In the meanwhile, Lily woke in the hospital with the nurse hovering over her and a headache that threatened to split her brain in two. "What happened?" She whispered as she tried to sit up, only to still with a gasp of pain.
The nurse gently pushed her back down, "Stay still, Miss Evans." She pursed her lips and looked into Lily's eyes, trying to see if her pupils were dialating or if she was still in shock, "Whoever hit you with whatever spell that was did a number on some of your bones. I have given you a couple of draughts that will fix it but they will take a little bit of time. And, you noticed the headache, I assume?" The dry look the nurse gave her allowed Lily to crack a tiny smile, "Concussion, probably from smaking your head into the floor. In a few hours, you will be right as rain."
The light in the room seemed to be needling it's way into Lily's brain, she closed her eyes with a wince, "That cannot come soon enough." She whispered feverantly as the nurse moved off, feeling like her insides were mashed potatoes at this point. Not a good sensation when your insides are supposed to feel like bones and organs, at any rate.
A quiet knock on the door a little while later shook Lily out of her dark thoughts and she carefully glanced over to see James, Sirius, Peter, and Remus poking thier heads around the curtain about her bed. Closing her eyes at the onslaught of pain the miniscule movement brought her, Lily asked, "What do you want?"
If James was a bit taken aback by her surly greeting, no sign of it crossed his face, "We just came to see how you are doing." He said casually, leaning against the wall above the bed, "I know that was a nasty shot the Ratbastard caught you with."
Lily sighed and thought about taking James to task, "Don't swear, Potter. Otherwise, I have to take points from Gryffindor. And ?I assume that we are in enough trouble over this as it is."
The Mauraders shared a quick glance between them, communicating silently, "Ah, as to that, Lily," Remus said carefully, having been appointed spokesperson for the group with a glance from James, "Ah, no one knows exactly what happened and we, ah, kind of need to keep it that way."
"What, exactly, do you mean by that?" Lily hissed back at Remus, opening her eyes wide and staring him down, "Hell, Remus, you are a Prefect. You know what has to be done." Glaring at James, Lily addressed her comment to Remus, "I could expect this of Potter and Black but you, Remus?" Growing more and more agitated as she spoke, Lily tried to sit up and fell back on her pillows with a hiss of pain.
Instantly, James dropped his casual pose and reached down to steady Lily so that she was in a controlled fall back down to the bed. With a jerk of his head, he sent the other three Mauraders out of the room. Waiting until they were gone, he knelt by Lily's bedside, and took her unresisting hand in his, "Lily, look at me." The command in his voice was more than she could ignore and she turned her head to face him, a tear rolling down to her pillow. That tear undid him, "We never ever meant for you to get hurt, Lily. You know that."
Lily closed her eyes once more, pain etched into her face, "But I did get hurt, James. Again." She was tiring visibly, going white under the strain of talking to him, "It seems to me that we just had this conversation the other day. Even when you try to walk away, you can't. You are going to have to finish what you started, no matter who gets hurt in the process."
Reaching out with one finger, James touched the tear shimmering in Lily's eye and tried to think of something to say. Finally, after a long silence, he settled for raw honesty, "I don't know what to say to that, Lily. I tried to walk away this time, you saw me do it. I don't know what else I can do about this whole mess." Dropping his head down to hers, resting his forehead on hers, James added, a touch hoarsly, "I just don't want to see you get hurt anymore. Not at my expense."
Lily opened her eyes and stared at James for a long second. Whatever she saw there resolved some inner conflict and she nodded, slowly so as not to jar her head. "I believe you." She whispered, pausing long enough for some indescribably happy emotion to fill James to the brim before dashing them again, "And, because of that, you have to stay away from me, James. As far away as we can be, otherwise," she indicated the hospital with a nod, "I will just end up here again."
James opened his mouth to protest that no, she would not, but shut it again when she pierced him with one of her looks. Nodding slowly, he rose to his feet and smiled tiredly down at her, "If that is you wish, then?" Damn, he had not meant for that to sound like a question but there it was...
"That is my wish." Lily said firmly, or tried to. A tear running down her cheek gave lie to her words and to her tone, "Stay away from me, James, and tell the others to do the same." Closing her eyes once more, she did not see the anquished look James shot her nor the sorrow on his face as he reached out to stroke her hair with a tremoring hand, "Don't."
James pulled his hand away from Lily's hair with real reluctance and nodded, "If it is your wish, I will obey." Walking away from her took everything he had and he struggled the entire way with his very base urge to throw himself at her feet and beg her not to do this. Why on earth he would feel this way for this smidgeon of a red head was entirely beyond him...but he could not deny what he felt. Pausing at the door, he glanced back at Lily, lying so pale and still on the bed with tears rolling down her cheeks. His heart twisted in his chest and James knew that he would not be able to do as she wished. Needing to affirm that to himself, if no one else, he whispered, "For now." before he walked out of the infimary.