Author's Note: Sorry this took such a long time!

A little more Remus for you, cornishxxxpixie.

Soulessaru- yes, it will VERY SLOWLY become very long.

Tomsgirl07- Sorry!!! Thanks for reading anyway! I'm stopping my habit- I was weird and didn't want to spell it (as in Lily) correctly. It's better now, just for you!

Chapter 5

Bethany leaned back against Remus, laughing. The group had discovered that Lily was also skipping dinner when they arrived in the common room. The scratches of a quill emanated from the door that lead to what James referred to as Lily's Lair. Not wanting to be found skipping dinner for purposes other than homework or being exposed to her general wrath, they were forced to move their dinner from the common room to James and Remus' dorm. Bethany had felt slightly nervous about entering the forbidden room, but the company of James and Remus soon wiped that thought from her mind.

"You didn't!" she screeched, half horrified, half elated. Remus and James were filling her in on all the Marauder exploits she had missed, especially the ones that Remus played a vital part in.

"He did," James clarified, "Now, be careful! You don't want to alarm the beast."

"What are you talking about James?" Bethany asked, "Do you have some fearsome pet that you haven't told me about?"

"No, Remus is enough of a handful for us," the Head Boy replied, for which he got a sound smack to the head.

"He's talking about Lily," Remus explained, chortling.

That brought Bethany back to the reality of the position she was in. She still held to the goal of uniting James and Lily, no matter how unrealistic it would be. Now that she had been accepted into the inner circle, there were questions she wanted to ask. The hurdles that had to be bridged with Lily were quite clear as she had ample time in seven years to hear all about why James Potter was evil incarnate. What Bethany didn't know was why James had such a strong dislike of Lily.

"You refer to my best friend as the beast?" she teased, pretending astonishment and anger.

"No, I refer to my archenemy as the beast," was the reply that she received.

"Why?"

"If this has anything to do with that insane plan of yours to bring Miss Evans and myself together, I'm not answering."

Merlin, he wasn't as slow on the uptake as Lily always said. "Why not?"

"You do release you are trying to create a couple out of a pair of people who can agree on only one thing. I hate her with my entire self, she does the same."

Downstairs, Lily was disturbed from her musing on the sins of James Potter against the greater humanity and herself. There were voices. Of course she had noticed when the group had entered the common room. She had mentally commended them for not being loud and annoying. However, it was evident that the male and female voices were emanating from a very inappropriate spot. It was most likely that they were coming from a dormitory, and Lily had one guess on whose dormitory that was. Seriously, if she caught Potter with a girl in his room she was going to the Head Master.

Reassuring her journal that very soon she would return to inform it of more of Potter's assault on the noble position of Head Boy, Lily set of to deal with the rule breakers.

She decided that if she climbed the steps slowly enough James, his cohort, and the girl would not be there and it would just be her imagination. When it came to Potter, Lily would much rather be insane. "I would be perfectly sane, if it wasn't for him," the perturbed girl muttered. It was horrid of him to disrupt her documentation of his bad qualities with the job of gathering more evidence.

The voices became more distinct as Lily reluctantly dragged herself up the steps. She really could use some peace so she could slee…study. It definitely was James and the low growl that escalated to a bark of laughter must be Remus. At least it wasn't Sirius. Thank God, Merlin, and everyone. The girl had a laugh similar to Bethany's. It might be that fifth year who had recently stopped wearing her hair in pigtails, Jessica Prince.

"I'm serious!" James was protesting as Lily neared the black door that led to the den of iniquity. She stifled a snort, and mentally harangued herself for using the description Sirius had recently adopted to annoy her.

"Seriously breaking the rules, Potter," she corrected, her maliciously icy calm tone withering the bloom of laughter and good humor in the room. She stepped around the door as she spoke and was rewarded with the sight of their reactions. The alarm in Potter's eyes was priceless. It was so nice to see him humbled.

However, the identity of the girl made Lily's soul contort as if under the cruicus curse. She could not believe it was Bethany who was so flaunting all the rules. Why couldn't her friends stand up for her? Why did they keep betraying her time after time? It wasn't fair, Lily acknowledged in some far off rational smidgeon of brain, to demand that Bethany not see her boyfriend because he was her friend's worst enemy. That didn't mean it didn't hurt to know the entire world was against the precepts of order and obeying the rules.

"Hello Lily" Remus ventured, "Care to join us in dinner? We were just finishing."

No wonder Bethany was in love with the boy. No matter how many Remus litanies she listened to, Lily had never heard "He's extremely sensitive and compassionate." She really did appreciate the gesture. She couldn't accept, really, but it was nice to know she had a way out of a full out offense. Not that she wouldn't take the chance to win a few points on James. "No, I'm afraid I'm not in for any rule breaking tonight." The same icy snap came back. "I believe I have work to do. If you would kindly desist as to not set a bad example, I would be much obliged." With a piercing gaze directed at the two boys, Lily whirled out of the room.

Behind the harsh clicks of Lily's flats came Bethany's hesitant tip-toe. Lily wasn't mad enough not to realize she was being followed. They continued in silence down the staircase, each of them separately waving to their friends who were returning to the common room after dinner.

Lily breezed right through the little groups of the tiny first years who were standing hesitantly near the fire. She really hoped the marauders would be smart enough not to pull anything else. Bethany interrupted Lily's snit as they passed into her office. "Lily, I'm sorry." Bethany said weakly. "I know that I wasn't supposed to do that and I'm sorry for making you come up and deal with James. This is going to be difficult but your friendship means the world to me."

Even in her irritated state, Lily was not immune to the knowledge that her friend was making a desperate plea to stay of Lily's Hate List, whose members belonged for life even after their rebellion against the rules was crushed. "Bethany I understand that you have to spend time with Remus. Just don't tell me why you weren't at dinner." the Head Girl answered, letting drop the wintry tones of the rule enforcer and taking on the voice of the real Lily.

With a little screech of euphoria, Bethany enfolded Lily in a hug then flopped onto the leather chair, leaving Lily her usual hard-backed desk chair. She was glad to be forgiven and that Lily had brought the dinner subject up. They had a lot to talk about.

As the curfew bell rang, the two girls plus Cassandra who had come in later were still lazily discussing the day's events. Lily had been so satisfied with the state of Bethany's happiness that the subject of James could be lightly discussed, even if Lily was forced to be firm in refusing to ever like James. "I just can't accept him, you two," Lily stated as she stared out of the tower over the lake.

"I know. He's not all evil, though." Bethany responded contentedly.

"I doubt that. Now I have to go deal with him. We have hall patrol together." Lily slowly pushed herself out of the wooden chair, twisting out a crick in her back. "Luckily we don't have to spend the entire night together…"

That statement was cut off with a sputter of laughter from Cassandra. Lily actually blanched. "Sorry, sorry!" exclaimed the Quidditch player, hands up in guard position, one half-jokingly holding a wand.

Sending a half-hearted smack towards Cassandra's head, which the girl easily ducked, Lily headed out of the room. She spotted some younger students leaping through the portrait whole and good naturedly began chiding them when she noticed their attention was being distracted away from her. The large eyes of the first year twins Molly and Janet were riveted on something over her right shoulder. Slightly confused, Lily turned around.

James was standing behind her holding the shoes. Bethany must have taken the things off when she was having dinner in the boy's room. Lily didn't wonder about that, the things looked painful, but why was James giving them to her?

"These were left in my room," James commented with an air of absolute boredom, yet loudly enough that the voices at the fireplace quieted to hissing whispers. Lily was aware that the sizeable number of Gryffindors left in the common room was staring at her en masse. The two first years eyes got wider than Lily though possible, taking up practically their entire heads.

"Thank you, James. I'll give these back to her," Lily said, struggling to keep her voice calm and carrying. The shock that he'd do something like that was taken over her anger. As much as she hated him, she never embarrassed him in front of everyone.

As the Head Girl and Boy were staring each other down and the rest of the room staring at them, someone rustled up to Lily and snatched the shoes away from her. They were moving so fast that Lily barely had the time to see that it was Bethany, head ducked and cheeks the flaming red that Lily had never seen out of embarrassment. However, Lily turned around to watch with concern along with the entire room as Bethany made her hurried passage up to her dorm room.

James hurried through the portrait hole and Lily caught sight of an aggravated Remus standing outside his room. Smiling slightly at the thought of someone else being angry at James, she also slipped out into the hallway.

James was moving at quite a good pace with his long legs, forcing Lily to trot to catch up with him. "What do you think you are doing?" she hissed violently, glaring fiercely at his shoulder as it was the only thing she could see. James continued striding ahead, completely unrepentant.

"I should have thought that it would be obvious, Evans. You always maintain you have the superior intellect, so it does follow you would be able to understand the feeble machinations of someone so inferior like myself." He sounded completely unruffled by Lily's anger, which set her off again.

"I know you were trying to destroy my reputation. I didn't know you were trying to undermine Bethany's as well!" Lily shrieked, startling a pair of third years out of a broom closet. They set off for their house at a run after a blaze of anger in a look from both the Head Boy and Head Girl. Both seventh years were so concentrated on their personal dispute that the reminder to deduct points efficiently headed for storage to be retrieved later.

"I wasn't. It was an unforeseen occurrence out of my control." James answered tersely, concentrating on the hiding spots in the shadows. If Lily hadn't been at full boil, she would have been amazed he could string such an impressive sentence together.

"Then why don't you care?" she screeched.

To that James could only remark, "Well, the hall divides here. I'll take the east wing, you take the west wing." Lily fumed at his retreating figure, all 5 feet 10 inches of moral filth simply defying her by its existence, then made an abrupt about-face and set off down her hallway. She was glad it was a long walk; it would take a long patrol to walk out the accumulated anger against James before she could sleep. It would be a long night.