Just to warn you all, things are going to get worse before they get better, but there is still hope. In any case, I'm glad people are enjoying it. I'm certainly enjoying writing it.

Chapter Four

Irune waited until Columbine had led her flock of gigglers away before she confronted Lily. "What was that about?"

Lily played dumb. "What was what about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. That thing between you and Potter."

"Oh, that." As if it could have been anything else.

"Right, that," Irune mimicked. "So? Tell me."

Lily sighed, pushing her hair back from her face. "I honestly don't know."

"Did he ask you out?"

Making a face, Lily said, "Don't you mean, did he ask me out again? Does he do anything else?"

"So he did ask you out," Irune said, satisfied. "And by the look on his face, you didn't turn him down gently. Don't you ever get tired of dashing the poor boy's hopes?"

"Poor boy?" Lily asked. "Potter? We are talking about the same person here, aren't we? Arrogant, pigheaded troublemaker who thinks he's God's gift to women every time he messes up his hair?"

Shaking her head slightly, for she'd heard it all before, heard it many times from Lily, Irune corrected the description of James Potter. "No, I'm talking about the guy who is so hopelessly in love with you that he's trying his hardest to turn himself around in hopes that you'll finaaly notice him and finally consent to a date."

"I notice him!" Lily objected. "How could I not?"

Irune ignored her, continuing: "Anyone else would have given in to the inevitable ages ago." Whether she meant any other boy would have stopped liking Lily, or any other girl would have succumbed to Potter's so-called charms, Irune didn't clarify and Lily didn't ask.

"Surely you're joking," scoffed Lily.

"I'm Irune, not Shirley."

Lily just rolled her eyes. "You're worse than Black with his horrid 'serious Sirius' bit."

Gasping in mock horror, Irune said, "Worse than Black? Oh, no! That is dreadful indeed! Take it back."

"I'll take it back if you take back that bit about Potter."

"I'd take it back if it weren't true," Irune said stubbornly.

"It isn't true," Lily insisted.

"You're in deniable."

"I am not."

Lily cursed as soon as her denial was out of her mouth. She knew it sounded like a lame attempt to deflect attention from her secret crush, as if she were a third-year with her first crush again. She didn't have a crush on Potter, secret or otherwise.

Luckily, Irune didn't decide to pursue the argument. Shrugging her shoulders, she said, "I don't know why you think he's so bad. Personally, being able to stare into those yummy chocolate eyes all day would be worth having to deal with some of the more extremes of his personality."

"His eyes are hazel, not brown," Lily corrected absently. Irune's laughter told her of her folly.

Lily rolled her own bright emerald green eyes. "Just because I know what colour his eyes are doesn't mean anything."

"No," Irune agreed, although in a manner that suggested that she was saying the absolute opposite of what she was feeling. "It only means that you know the colour of his eyes."

"Exactly," said Lily, only too aware that her answer was hollow.

"And it has nothing to do with often you look at those hazel eyes, gazing deeply into his soul."

Lily frowned. "Exactly." Although it was the same word as before, her tone was significantly colder this time.

"And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that you're really rather fond of that set of hazel eyes, right? Surely that isn't why you spend hours on end gazing into them, deciding the exact shade they are."

Lily outright ignored Irune this time. Such outrageous slander didn't deserve a response. Unfortunately, Irune didn't take her silence as the disdain she meant to project, but rather as embarrassment. Smiling widely, as if she knew something that Lily didn't, Irune said, "When are you going to just admit that Potter isn't so bad?"

"Potter is that bad," Lily said firmly. "He's immature."

"He's matured enough to be Head Boy this year," Irune countered.

Lily continued as if Irune didn't have a point. "His friends are horrid."

"Though you must admit that he sticks by them through thick or thin, and has been loyal to them for years," Irune pointed out. "Not many would do the same."

"He's just so arrogant!" Lily shook her head in frustration. She didn't want to be having this conversation.

"And you're stubborn. You'd make a great match."

"No, we wouldn't! Why is everyone against me in this? Why am I such a bitch for not wanting to go out with him? I never asked for this attention, and nothing I do seems to stop it. It's not my fault!"

Irune gave the question careful consideration, chewing on her bottom lip as she regarded Lily. It was more than Lily usually got—the rolling of the eyes and the snapping of a hand open and shut imitating a mouth that was talking too much and saying nothing new. As such, Lily appreciated the gesture, even if she didn't appreciate Irune's next words. "Would it really be so bad if you gave him a chance?"

Before Lily could think up a suitable retort (somehow saying "Yes" didn't seem to be enough), Irune gathered up the school books that hadn't been touched all afternoon and got up. "I'm going to the library. Kettleburn assigned three feet for Monday, and I can't do any work in the Common Room. Think about what I said. If you keep this up, pretty soon Potter is going to give up on you."

"But I want him to give up on me. I don't want him to pursue me anymore."

If Irune heard Lily, she gave no indication of it, continuing on her way out the portrait hole without so much as a twitch.

Lily's words seemed oddly hollow even to her own ears.

In the next chapter:

Lily woke up suddenly, sitting up straight in bed. A random "No, professor, I said the green monkey not the blue antelope" was the only response she got to the disturbance she made, so she felt safe to ignore it.

"I'm in love with James Potter," Lily marvelled.

It was difficult to say how Lily had come to that conclusion from her dream, which involved McGonagall scolding her for not properly conjugating her Latin in order to understand the theory behind the magical properties of the number three (for McGonagall was the Arithmancy professor in this dream, never mind that Arithmancy did not use spells nor did Lily actually take Arithmancy, which her conscious self suspected hadmore to it than the magical properties of the numbers three, seven and otherwise) until she and James were awashed in an eerie green light that ultimately woke her up. But not necessary to explain since she fell back to sleep immediately and remembered nothing of it—the dream or the declaration—when morning came.