Disclaimer: Again, these characters are not mine and I take no credit for them. Ha!

Chapter Three

1:46 am

Lily groaned as she rolled over. She was lying flat on her back in the closet. She sarcastically thanked whoever had the bright idea to leave them in the most freezing cold closet in Hogwarts. She shivered and stole a glance at James.

He was leaning against a wall, his eyes closed, but she knew he was awake by the way his hand lifted itself now and then to rummage through his wild black hair. Lily groaned again as she pulled her cloak tighter around her, still freezing cold in her pajamas. She missed her bed, all cozy and warm. Heck, she missed any bed!

She had a hard time hating James right now. His cloak was lying on her shoulders, but his bare chest was still revealed, moving up and down rhythmically with his breathing.

"We're supposed to be trying to get along you know Lil," James pointed out, his eyes still closed as she turned away from him and scuffled to sit up, shivering again.

"I don't care Potter, you know I don't like you and my friends must be crazy to think I do," the redhead huffed, hugging her shoulders tightly.

James quirked an eyebrow at her as he took his head off the wall it was leaning on. "I'm sorry about hitting you with that charm. I was aiming for Melody, you know, the gossip queen of Hogwarts? Of course, she might've revealed the same secret about your true feelings towards me."

Lily glared at him as he said the last statement rather cockily. "You sound so sure that it was true. Maybe I was faking the whole thing. You have no proof you did it wrong and I was just lying."

"I'd like to think I know you rather well after being rejected and hated by you for six years," James declared, grinning at Lily's deepening scowl.

"If you knew me so well, you'd back off," she hissed, avoiding his gaze. God he's handsome…

It was quiet again.

2:12 am

"Are you cold?" James asked as Lily shivered again. How the hell did it get so cold on the seventh floor of Hogwarts? Lily didn't answer him for a few moments. James decided that she was in fact cold and moved across the closet to where she was and stretched out his cloak to go around her shoulders as well.

Lily shrugged it off and turned her pale face away from him. "Despite how cold I am I would never want you close to me James."

"I have a first name?" James asked with sarcastic surprise. "You've rarely if ever called me James before. I thought it might not have been my name anymore!" Lily turned her head towards him and glared at him. She jerked her head to the other side but James caught it with his hand.

"Why can't you just give me a chance Lily?" he asked quietly, with such a change in his demeanor than Lily was used to that she looked at him differently for a split second.

Because I don't want my heart broken. Lily lifted her own hand and shoved James' out of her way and turned her head the other way.

2:30 am

"What were Melody and Mitch thinking?" Lily said aloud after a while. James had sifted a couple inches away from her to give her room and now they were leaning against opposite sides of the closet, neither looking at one another, but instead at the ceiling.

"The same thing everybody else in this school thinks," James pointed out, his voice now with a bit of an icy edge to it. "That we like each other."

Lily sighed. "Why have you been bugging me ever since our first year?" she finally asked.

"Because I liked you Lily," James said simply without a bit of emotion revealed in his words. "I liked you ever since I saw you. I have no clue why, maybe it's because you're beautiful and smart and witty and you never say yes."

"So you just want me because you can't have me," Lily decided, with just a hint of the crestfallen feeling she was experiencing at that thought.

"Nope, that's not it," James shook his head and his head fell forward at the same time Lily's did. He caught her eye and smiled. "I want you because I really like you Lily, despite the fact that you always seemed to not like me."

Lily blushed just a bit and turned her head back up to the ceiling, smiling just a little bit, and shivering again, but this time she knew it wasn't because of the cold.

2:41 am

"So you want me to give you a chance?" Lily blurted out, looking at James' surprised look. He sat up a bit eagerly and gave her a small smile. Lily rolled her eyes.

"I don't think I know you well enough to give you a fair chance though James," the redhead pointed out. She shivered again. The cold was really getting to her and her cloak wasn't enough warmth.

"Maybe we could just ask each other questions so that we get to know each other better," James shrugged as he moved closer to Lily with his cloak. This time, she didn't reject him as he draped his cloak around the both of them.

"Okay… do you have any siblings?" Lily asked him.

James shook his head. "I'm an only child. My parents usually shine the spotlight on me because of this. My dad, he works in the Ministry of Magic and my mum works at a shop in Diagon Alley selling jewelry." He turned his head towards Lily. They were awfully close and she had a hard time pretending she didn't like it. "You have any siblings?"

"One sister named Petunia," Lily answered. She had a hollow smile on her face. "She's a muggle you know, and she absolutely despises me because I'm a witch. My parents say she'll come around, but she moved out three years ago when she graduated school and she just got married to this guy Vernon. I didn't like him very much, very plain and boring, but Petunia seems to like that kind of thing."

"Sorry about your sister Lils," James shrugged his shoulders a bit. "She doesn't sound very pleasant."

"We haven't gotten along since I got my Hogwarts letter, but it's okay, I have Melody and Mitch and my parents are rather proud of me being a witch," Lily's hollow smile turned into a genuine one, remembering when Melody had come over to her house once.

Petunia had hated Melody from the moment she had seen the pureblooded witch in her purple robes and wand in hand. Petunia had begun shrieking about freaks in the house. Melody and Lily had come up with multiple plans on how to torture her, including leaving a voodoo doll on her bed. They had never gone through with anything though.

Lily snapped back to reality when she realized that the knee her hand had rested on was moving and it wasn't hers. She blushed crimson and mumbled an apology as she pulled her hand back onto her own knee, moving it a bit just to make sure.

3:21 am

"And then Snape pulled out his wand right there in the middle of Diagon Alley and muttered some curse. Peter was so close to being nicked by it, thank goodness Sirius bumped into ol' Snivellus before he could get the curse off."

Lily watched James as he recounted the story of why James had constantly been going after Snape since third year. Apparently Snap had met James, Sirius, Remus and Peter in Diagon Alley just before third year and had gotten into a heated argument followed by a curse being aimed.

"He was sent a warning from the Ministry of Magic since apparently it was only the first time he'd done magic outside of school, but his dad came up and grabbed him by the ear, cursing Snape as he pulled him out Diagon Alley. I swear, I almost felt bad for the git. His dad didn't seem like a pleasant guy."

Lily shrugged against James' shoulder. "I always thought you were just interested in being a bully."

"Come on Lily, I may not be the nicest guy in this school, but I don't pick on people in particular without a reason, and it was all in fun then. I see we were a bit obnoxious and quite some jerks, which is why as you saw last year, we tried to quit it," James pointed out.

Lily yawned and nodded her head. It drooped against James' shoulder in her tiredness. "How late is it?" James reached into the pocket of his cloak and came out with a watch.

"3:23 in the morning," the black-haired boy declared with a yawn himself.

"They're mad, depriving us of sleep like this," Lily said, a bit too tired to even try and move her head off of James' shoulder. It was rather comfortable anyways…

"How did you and Melody end up getting along anyways? One day you two hated each other's guts and the next you were best friends," James asked curiously. "The whole school was rather shocked. Everyone expected you two to end up as bitter of rivals as Malfoy and Weasley when they graduated just after we started Hogwarts."

"Well… remember when we were forced to work together in Potions in second year and ended up spiking Professor Smith's hair and then she gave us detention?" James nodded, smirking.

"So in detention we kept blaming each other when we were cleaning the dungeons without magic and began throwing our sponges at each other and calling each other names. When she called me a suck up I told her she was one too. She started laughing all of a sudden and I did too. We were both soaking wet with dirty and soapy water and just kept laughing. On our way back to the dorm we both kind of apologized for jumping down each other's throats since the Hogwarts Express in first year and we became friends."

James was chuckling lightly. Lily felt awfully comfortable with his chest heaving up and down as he laughed and her leaning next to him. "That's an interesting start to a friendship."

"Like you're one to talk with when you tried to prank Remus in first year with Sirius' help but he figured out your plan and it backfired and you and Sirius ended up beginning him for mercy as he held that dungbomb over your head in the common room. An interesting way to make friends don't you think?"

3:47 am

They had been talking for around an hour about everything from their families to their friends to their favorite classes and Lily even talked about some of her favorite Muggle music that greatly interested James' wizarding upbringing.

But silence fell as their minds were both overcome with their tiredness. Lily was basically completely leaning on James by this point and she didn't object as his warm hand rubbed her cold arm.

"How can you be so warm when we're stuck in this freezing closet?" Lily asked him as she leaned her head against the wall to be able to face James.

He gave her his famous smile but Lily had observed him flirting with every girl in the school before. His eyes usually revealed what he was really thinking. Occasionally his eyes twinkled with delight, especially when he tortured her for the past six years, and sometimes his eyes showed interest or lust towards whoever he was flirting with. Sometimes even, his eyes betrayed that he hated what he was doing.

But this time his hazel eyes looked at Lily differently. Smiling he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "I guess I'm just naturally warm," he shrugged.

Lily couldn't lie to herself and say that his arm wasn't comforting. She even didn't push it away this time. James noticed this and his smile widened.

Lily's green eyes looked him in the eye. She stopped lying to herself. Mitch and Melody had been geniuses to do this, Sirius, Remus and Peter too. Because she did like James, as much as she said she didn't. And by the look in his eyes, she could tell James liked her too.

XxXxX

What happens next? MUAHA! We will see more in chapter four. More rhyming! W00t! XD This'll be around five chapters in its completed length, so we're more than halfway done! Gasp! Anyways, I have to say thanks to everybody who reviewed. I'm glad you guys like this so much. I love writing fluff like this. And I love writing James and Lily. Thanks so much for the reviews! They make me smile. :)

7-8-05