Almost two more months went by. Lily was with the boys so often that it was no longer noticeable to others if she had any other good friends. All of them were closer to her now, but especially James, who finally felt that he was a friend to her. Yet a familiar feeling of nervousness always surfaced when he was with her as if they were strangers, which was somehow a good feeling. His world sort of swirled around him out of control when she was there, but he didn't notice this; he only unconsciously missed this when she wasn't there, and would sit in class or in the dormitory feeling bothered by something without being able to place what it was that was nagging him.

One day after classes the five were all outside by the lake, James and Sirius sitting on a large rock while the others sat on the ground. James was doing homework like most of the others, digging into a chapter of Transfiguration he was required to read, while Sirius leaned back with one hand on the rock behind him and looked bored while eating an apple.

Lily laughed at something Remus had said. The two were looking over the same textbook, answering questions together. "Except that would be cheating," Lily laughed in response to whatever Remus's comment had been.

Sirius threw what was left of his apple aside and lay back so that he was curved backwards across the rock and his black hair touched the grass on the other side.

"If you're so bored then do some work, Padfoot," James suggested without hope.

"I did it in detention," he sighed.

"I'm impressed."

"Sirius, do you know the nine distinctive features of a wood nymph that make it unlike humans?" Lily asked as if to give him something to do. "We have all but one of them."

Sirius held up fingers, counting, as he listed off while still hanging upside-down off the rock, "No pupils, no organs, bad eyesight, unsymmetrical bodies-"

"Oh yeah, the symmetry thing. That's what we don't have," Lily said to Remus, and they both scribbled on their pieces of parchment.

"What are the others?" Peter asked, and Lily showed her paper to him.

Sirius sat up and kicked his book bag a foot toward them. "Mine is finished, if you want to just look at that."

Remus yawned, rolling up his parchment. "Naw, I'm done for now. I can't concentrate outside."

"No kidding," Lily agreed, though she was still writing without showing any sign of packing up her work, her radiant red hair hanging down in her face so that her eyes were hidden as she bent over her parchment. "It's such a nice day."

"Has to be hell for the fifth and seventh years," Sirius said. "Getting ready for their tests and all."

"Want to go see if anyone's in the Hall early for dinner?" Peter suggested.

"Alrighty," Sirius said, springing up onto his feet.

"Now?" James asked, looking at his watch. "Woah, it's later than I thought."

"Time flies when you're doing fun homework," Sirius said, slapping his back jokingly.

James went back to reading his chapter and didn't listen to the others as they got up to walk back into the castle. Therefore he didn't realize at first that Lily had stayed behind and was still sitting cross-legged on the ground in front of him. She tiredly put her quill down and stretched her arms above her, and James's eyes flicked up from the pages of his textbook at her and then returned to reading.

Lily stood up, though she didn't seem to be finished because she left her book open on the ground and all of her work out. She sat on the rock next to James where Sirius had sat before and looked over his shoulder at his book. "You're still in Transfiguration," she noted. "What do you want to do for a living?"

James rested the book on his lap and shrugged. "I don't know. Something with dignity to it."

"How so?"

"As in I don't want some office job at the Ministry. I want to do something that helps people and that not just any person will or can do. Maybe a job where I protect people or something."

"From what?"

"Dangerous people," he said like it was obvious. "Criminals."

"You could be an Auror."

"Yeah, I guess."

Lily laughed. "You make it sound like there's something serious to protect people from."

"You never know what could happen." James let his open book slide to the ground as he had lost the tolerance to concentrate on reading it.

"What could the world need protection from in our lifetime?" Lily asked.

"I don't want to protect the whole world. But if I can save just some people from getting hurt, that's better than typing at a desk for the Daily Prophet. If I can end up saving just one person who I care about then it'll be worth devoting myself to knowing how to defend people."

Lily smiled at him and he didn't understand what she was smiling about. She shook her head and said, "I never would have guessed you to be such a heroic type. Before I knew you very well, you just seemed lazy."

"Heroic?" James repeated the word. "No, I'm not."

Lily looked down and was silent for a while. Then she said a little quietly, "You could have been hurt that day."

James was caught by surprise and then realized she was talking about when he had gotten her out of the tunnel the night she found out about Remus.

"I try not to think about what could have happened to me because of how stupid I was," Lily said. "But it could have been you, too."

"I wasn't worried," James said quickly. "Sirius was holding Remus back away from you. Any of us could have changed and gotten you out."

"But you were the only one who did."

James turned his head and looked at her and something pulled at his heart and stirred in the back of his mind. She was silent now and was staring forward. She was incredibly beautiful. He hadn't really noticed it before, or at least he hadn't thought about it. Everyone said that Lily was pretty so he had always kind of taken it for granted that she was and had more importantly regarded her as being kind and sweet-tempered. But in the sunlight outside on such a gorgeous day she was nearly impossible to look away from once he had set his eyes on her.

James suddenly inhaled largely and said, "Lily."

She looked up, her expression friendly and warm. "What?"

He didn't know if he had meant to say her name. "Huh," he said thoughtfully, tracing a finger along his jaw in thought. "So weird...I feel like I've forgotten something."

Lily smiled again, but more to herself. She didn't tell him that he had said the same thing once before when he was alone with her.

A comfortable silence settled between them, and then Lily slowly reached over to James's hand that was resting on the rock and took it in hers. He looked down at this in surprise, and then a certain calmness and understanding set into him and he closed his fingers around her hand gently but securely. Before they could even make any kind of eye contact a figure came into view and walked in front of them. Snape was walking right past them toward the side of the lake.

Lily pulled her hand from his immediately and lifted it to her head, looking casual as she ran it through her hair and stared in a direction away from James. It was very awkward. Snape's eyes seemed to have been attracted to the sudden movement because he was looking at them now with no kind of readable expression, even though he appeared not to have known at first that they were sitting there when he approached the lake.

As soon as he seemed to realize what he was doing, Snape looked away again and walked a few strides toward the shore, putting his hands in his pockets and starting to kick small rocks around to keep to himself. He did not look completely unaffected by what he may have just seen between the two of them, but then again Snape could not help looking dismal by himself no matter what. Lily had tried to stop him from seeing them as they were as if she instinctively didn't want to give him anything to laugh about, but looking at him now that seemed far from a realistic concern. He had always appeared to hide in the shadows of his Slytherin friends in one way or another so that he failed to be intimidating no matter how many attemptingly threatening things he said. But the sight of him completely alone with seemingly no reason to be wandering by himself was strangely doleful and even eerie. It was almost enough to make the years James and his friends had spent in school tormenting him suddenly haunt him, but at the same time Snape kept his unfriendly appearance that was unable to gain pity, and he was reminded how much he had deserved it all.

Lily and James were apparently thinking the same thing, because she leaned to the side and whispered in his ear, "I think it's his defense mechanism."

James whispered, "What?"

"He's cruel because he doesn't want pity."

James stared at Snape in thought. They had long since given up on going out of their ways to get revenge on eachother as they often had when they were younger, with an occasional exception credited to Sirius, but James still hated him. He was cold and uncompassionate, and James had often wondered why Lily would bother being decent to him.

"He doesn't thank you for being understanding," he said quietly to her.

"But you could leave him alone," she said, "even if you don't like him."

"Talk to Sirius, not me," James excused in a somewhat childish and unmindful manner.

Lily gave him a chastising look which he ignored, but her expression softened as she seemed to admit to herself that he was right about her preaching to the wrong person. She stood up and collected her things from the ground, and James retrieved his book as she said, "See you later," and walked off to go into the castle and eat dinner. And just like that it was as if what had just happened when they were sitting there together hadn't happened at all. A delicate, stolen moment that was so fragile that it had ceased to exist with the smallest interruption.

When James looked back up, briefly, at where Snape was standing, he had moved farther to the left of where he was sitting on the rock. He got the strangest feeling that he had been very aware of them the whole time despite looking away, like an eye in the back of his head had watched them. With this uncomfortable thought in mind, leaving him to himself suddenly seemed like a good idea, so about ten minutes later James stood up and headed for the castle.