After dinner, Mary, Allison and I were sitting in the common room doing absolutely nothing. Well we were supposed to be doing homework, but when I say nothing I meant nothing of importance.

"Don't look now, but…" Mary said.

"Hi Gorgeous"

I groaned and tried to ignore him. I glanced at Mary and Allison, but they just shrugged their shoulders as if to say don't ask me I'm helpless.

"I said, Hi Gorgeous"

"Hi James," I said while grinding my teeth, staring at the book in my lap.

"We're supposed to be working together, remember?"

I took a deep breath, "Fine, whatever, sit down."

He came around to sit across from me. I have to say he looked just as hott as he usually did. Which isn't saying much considering, his mind came along with the body. If you could deal with that arrogance, I'd bow to you.

"Uh, I've forgotten something upstairs." Mary said quickly getting up.

"Yeah me too." Allison ran to catch up with her.

"Oh no you don't." I yelled, grabbing the back of their shirts and dragging them to the other side of the room.

They turned around guilty.

"You can't leave me here with him. Plus you have to work on your projects too." I reminded them, quietly enough so the boys couldn't hear me.

James' POV

When Lily was talking too the girls, James had a different idea.

"Guys, can't you take Mary and Allison away somewhere? Give us some alone time. Anywhere, to the library, great hall, even to the other side of the common room. Just get them away from Lily."

"Anything for you, man." Sirius said, slapping me on the back. I love Sirius sometimes; he's the best friend a guy could have.

Remus looked a little iffy, like he really didn't want to spend the whole evening alone with Allison. (I know that sounds really dirty but there was no way else to put it.)

"Please! I'd do the same for you." I begged.

"Come on Remus, you know James would spend the evening with Snape for you." Sirius said, stating the truth.

He finally gave in, "Fine, I'll get her to go to the library, but only for you."

"Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!"

At that time the girls had finished their little pow-wow, and came back. (pow-wow I love that word!)

"It's too loud in here, Allison, let's go to the library." Remus said.

"Mind if we come with you." Sirius said, being a great actor. "Come on, Mary."

"No, let's stay here." There was a little glint in Mary's eye. She only looked like that when people were going to do what she said, no matter what.

"Yeah, we don't want Lily and James to get lonely." Allison said, softly, as you can tell she wasn't the best at standing up for her self.

Sirius grabbed Mary's wrist, and being a boy, he was strong enough to pull her out of her chair. He whispered something in her ear that none of the others could here. (But since you're on the outside you get to know what was said. Aren't you lucky?)

"Please, I'll pay you, I'll do anything." I know it's totally OOC for Sirius to beg, but come on wouldn't you beg for your best friend.

Mary's glint changed to mischievous, having the most popular guy under her possession did have its advantages.

Mary gave Lily a sympathic look, then said, "Oh, alright, come on Allison."

Allison got up from her chair reluctantly. Then all 4 of them left for the library.

Lily muttered something under her breath that sounded vaguely like 'back-stabbers' but I chose to ignore it.

Lily's POV

James leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair in that stupid way he does. He sometimes reminds me of those preppy bleach-blonde girls that run their fingers through their hair. (It's hilarris to watch, they push it out of their face and then it just falls back, doing no good what so ever. You know the ones I'm talking about, right?)

(AN: Just for the record, I have no idea why Lily gets so mad when James does that, I think it's cute. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just physico like that.)

"So Gorgeous, do you remember what this report is supposed to be about? Potions is more your style, I prefer DADA. " (defense against the dark arts)

No! No way, is he dropping this whole report on me. He's going to help, if I have something to say about it.

I pulled out my notebook and recited exactly what Professor Burns had written on the board. I hardly ever write notes, I've got the best memory of anyone I know. I never study, but always make good grades. But today I made an exception on account that I knew James would be the bitch he was and try to weasel out of it.

(I have no evidence of Lily's photographic memory, but they never said she didn't have one.)

"You're not ditching me, you've gotta work too."

James looked really surprised, like he didn't expect me to make him work.

"I'd never do that to you, to anybody. I'm not that mean, you know."

Now it was my turn to be surprised. Maybe I'd misjudged him. Maybe he wasn't as bad as I thought.

"Well, maybe Snape." He said as an afterthought. "Where's old Snape? I haven't tortured him today. Oh, he's probably bucketing the grease from his hair."

I gritted my teeth. Ok, I've changed my mind. Always trust first impressions.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, talking about the report and not noticing I was wishing that I was anywhere but here.

"I want you to never talk to me again," I threw a book at him. It knocked the wind out of him as he caught it. "I want you to keep your nose in that book and look for whatever it is this stupid report is about. I want you to stay as far away from me as you can, don't talk to me, don't look at me, don't even think about me."

A huge uneasy silence hung over us. Before long James had decided I had cooled off enough, and spoke up. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you so mad. I was just kidding."

I just fumed, trying to ignore his apology. "What did Snape ever do to you, anyway?"

James looked taken back, "What didn't he do to me? I think he's put every curse ever invented on me. We've hated each other since first year. That's just how me and Snape are. Attack or be attacked."

"Oh" I said quietly, I never got to hear his side of things, only what people said of him.

There was that uneasy silence over us again, as we searched through the millions of books we had there.

Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore, I had to say something, "You know you could stop the war."

"Right, and how am I supposed to do that?" he sounded disbelieving.

"Surrender"

"Never"

"Please!"

"But what would I do for the next 8 months?"

God, why does he have to be such a bastard.

James' POV

Surrender to Snape.

Not an ice cube's chance in Hell was I doing that, not even for Lily. Plus even if I did, it probably wouldn't do anything. Snape would always be the same fucking bastard.

"You do know that if I surrendered, he'd just pull out his wand and curse me again."

"I never said it was going to be easy."

"Easy? I'd call it impossible."

"He not that bad, really."

I burst out laughing.

"James," she sounded like she couldn't believe she was putting up with me. "I'm serious, he's not as bad as you make him out to be."

"I'm s-sorry." I sputtered through laughter, "But can you imagine the Slytherins in their common room telling Snape, 'You need to stop fighting with Potter, he's really a nice guy.'"

She paused for a second, then started laughing too.

Lily's POV

Damn, why is it that he can make me laugh when I'm trying so hard to be mad at him.

James' POV

We worked on the miracle project for a while more, laughing and joking around, pretty much having fun. It was a stupid project, but if it made Lily spend time with me, it was the greatest thing on earth.

She looked like she was having enough fun spending time with me, but it was time for the all important question.

"Lily?"

"Yeah"

"Will you go out with me?"

She dropped the book she'd been reading on the table, "James, how many times do I have to tell you no?"

"One more time would be good."

"NO"

We sat there with that uneasy silence again, the comfort I tried so hard to achieve destroyed.

"Plus I'm already taken." She said smugly.

Taken? Some other guy was dating my Lily, MY LILY!

Now I knew she must have dated before, I doubted she was even a virgin, I didn't want to think of that. The less I knew about what Lily was doing with other guys, the better.

I intimated most of the guys at Hogwarts. They know that Lily is mine and is off limits. I guess I must have missed one. Well, I'd take care of that in no time.

"Taken? By who?" When I found out who was dating my girl, well, let's just say he won't be dating my girl much longer.

"Bryan Myers"

"Well, that's nice." I'm sure I sounded calm, but inside I was fuming.

Bryan? Now I know I'd gotten to him. He definitely knew better.

"Lily? James? What are you still doing in here?" I turned around to find Mary and Allison in their pajamas. I looked around, noticing for the first time that we were the only ones left in the common room.

"What are you doing here?" Lily said, just as confused as I was.

"Yeah, aren't you supposed to be in the library?"

"Uh, guys, it's almost midnight. We got back here hours ago." Mary said, like it was the most obvious thing in the word.

"Why didn't you tell us when you came in?" Lily said, sounding betrayed again.

"You looked like you were having so much fun." Allison said, trying to be her cute and innocent self.

Mary yawned and turned back toward the dormitories, "So, are you coming to bed, Lily? Or are you staying all night out here with James?"

Lily turned a bright crimson red, she turned to face me, "No, you go up, I'll be there in a sec."

She started packing up her books and homework, as Mary and Allison scampered up the stairs. I didn't want her to leave. For once in the 7 years I'd known her, it had finally felt like she didn't completely hate me. Then I remembered that I got to spend the entire week with her. That thought cheered me up a bit.

I ruffled through the papers, "Do you realize how little we actually got done tonight?"

"Huh? According to Mary and Allison we spent hours working on this."

"But we got hardly any work done. Look."

She grabbed the papers from me and burst out laughing. "We'll work on it tomorrow."

"Hopefully we'll get more done then." I don't think she noticed I wasn't talking about the project.

She grabbed her bag and ran up the stairs. I stared after her. Halfway up she turned around, "Bye James, see you tomorrow."

She turned back around and was out of sight in seconds.

"Bye…Angel."