Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of the other characters that are in the Harry Potter books. J. K. Rowling does, like everyone already knows.
Author's Note: Thanks to lOvEiNhEaVeN, reesespeices88, breadcrumb, Babigirl2246, PammaPotter, moony128, Black's Gurl, KLLRS, padfootandprongs4ever, pale pink roses, LeslieGlady, dee, Jo, Sirius's one true love, briboyzrsexy78, Desolation Lily, Hyper-Shaman-Girl, Minerva-witch, libyanauthor, Blackgirl5, Miracle Girls, miss-mags-ak, dodah, InLoVeWiThJaMeS pOtTeR, M'embrassez lentement, Aries Chic, Elaine, Katrina, and kimmy for reviewing the original version of Love Affair.
Thanks to -Scp-, sugur-huny-bun, On3-ShoT, Harry and Ginny 4eva, babi-gurl-chels, sunlitmist, Jasmine Potter, -lily-potter-wannabe-, oKateMateo, bluejeanmistress, Fairy-GYAKUTENNO-MEGAMI, riotgirl72, asiangirl668, me, Alicia, acf8990, Juicilyn, bananaslugg, wh00t, Miss Myrtle360, alright, Vanilla Sugar, wizemunkee006, lonelystarz, and Mr. Corso for reviw
bluejeanmistress: First off, thanks so much for both reviewing and saying you liked this story, and I'm glad you like this one even better than the first, so do I! To answer your question, I would guess that there are about 10-15 chapters left. I've got in my mind how many chapters are left before Lily and James are finally together (although I'm not going to tell anyone) and after that I've got some plans for them before I end the story. So, no fears, Love Affair won't end any time quickly! But when it does, I'm planning on writing a sequel!
And for all of you who are Emmy haters, I'm totally on your side! Anyone who stands in between Lily and James is! But I need her for the story, so unfortunately she's got to be here.
Also, you all need to trust me when I say things will work out in the end! I'm glad that you all are mostly saying that you do trust me, and you should! I know exactly what I'm doing, and I've even thought long and hard about what I want to happen in each chapter! Okay, now on with the story!
Carina sighed, she didn't know what to do. It had been two days since James refused Lily, and Lily still hadn't moved from her bed. She refused to go to work, she didn't take a shower, her eyes were still red and puffy, and she barely ate anything. Carina practically had to force food into her mouth.
In fact, Carina had never seen Lily in this state before. She had never seen her so helpless and such a mess. And frankly, it scared her. Lily was always so strong and independent. She was always up for the challenge, loving to test herself.
But now, it was completely different. It was as if a piece of her soul had been taken away from her, never to be given back. She just wasn't the same person.
Carina knew she had to do something, anything to get Lily out of her bed and into her life again. Plus, Jason was sending owls all the time, asking where she was and when he could see her again. On multiple occasions, Carina had to forge Lily's signature, lying and saying that she was going out of town with Carina for the week.
She quickly conjured up some coffee and peeked her head into Lily's room. "Are you up?"
"Barely," grumbled Lily.
Carina pushed the door open a little more and slid into the room. "Here, I brought you some coffee."
"I don't want it."
"Lils, come on, you love coffee. And it smells wonderful and tastes even better," Carina sweetly said.
"No."
Carina sighed, but placed the coffee down on Lily's nightstand. "Okay, you have to get out of bed now. It's been two days already."
"Leave me alone," Lily mumbled.
"Lily Marie Evans, if you don't get out of bed this instant, I'll, well I'll, um, I'll just force you out of it, and it won't be any fun for you," Carina warned.
Lily gave her a look that said "yeah right, you wouldn't dare."
"Fine, you've left me no choice," Carina said. She stood at the end of Lily's bed and ripped the sheets right off of the bed, leaving Lily exposed in pajama pants and a tank top.
"Carina, stop it, I'm cold," Lily whined.
"Then get out of this bed this second," she responded.
Lily just sat there, crossed her arms, and pursed her lips together.
"Lily, get up, this isn't healthy!" Carina exclaimed.
She didn't move though.
"Fine, is this what you want this to come down to? Fine then," Carina remarked. She then took her wand out of her robes and said, "Wingardium Leviosa." Her wand was pointed directly at Lily. In an instant, Lily began to rise up, shouting curse words at Carina.
Carina directed her wand toward the bathroom, walking along Lily's floating body. She went to the shower and turned the water on. She released the spell, sending Lily crashing down and into the tub. Of course, Carina had suspected that she might be forced to do this, so before hand she conjured up a soft padding all along the tub's surface.
"Carina!" Lily shouted out in anger.
"It's for your own good. You need to stop moping around and get on with your life," she explained.
"No, just stop it!" Lily shrieked. "You don't know what's for my own good, I know what's for my own good, not you." With that said, she got to her feet and pushed her way past Carina and toward her bedroom.
Carina just stood there, shocked. She hadn't expected this to happen. She imagined Lily snapping back to reality, realizing that James Potter wasn't worth all this. But it didn't happen that way, and Carina couldn't help but wonder if James meant more to Lily than anyone could have known, including Lily.
Now she really didn't know what to do. Not only was Lily upset and unwilling to move from her bed, but she was mad at Carina now.
It was nearly twenty minutes before Carina went to check on Lily again, this time bringing a large box of chocolate chip cookies with her.
"Peace offering?" Carina asked, holding the box out in front of her.
Lily looked her up and down, trying to determine if this was some trick to get her out of bed again. When she realized that Carina was truly sincere she allowed her to come in and motioned her to sit down on her bed.
"Lils, I'm sorry," Carina began. "I should never have tried to get you out and back to the real world this quickly. I know that when you care about someone, it takes awhile."
"It's okay," Lily said, grabbing a cookie as she spoke.
"Do you want to talk about it at all?"
"No," Lily responded, taking another bite of her cookie.
Carina looked down at her lap for moment, but then took a cookie as well. She didn't know what to say now. She and Lily shared very little awkward moments, but this certainly was classified as one. She hated it though; she wanted everything to be okay. She wanted Lily to be happy, and she wanted the two of them to be back on track.
Lily let out a sigh, but then said, "I never thought that he wouldn't come."
Carina looked up at her best friend, and saw slight tears appearing at her eyes. She knew it must be hard for her to talk about this, but she was glad that Lily was finally getting it off of her chest and out into the open. This would be good for her, Carina was certain about that.
"When I told him that he had twenty-four hours to decide, I seriously thought that he wouldn't even question it. I thought that he, he…" she trailed off as the tears started to heavily flow.
Carina reached forward, putting a comforting arm around her friend. Lily lent in, collapsing against her as pools dripped from her face.
As Carina looked down at her friend, memories from their seventh year fluttered into her mind. She remembered the affect that James had on her last time…
Carina was sitting on her bed, looking through a magazine when the door was plunged open. She immediately looked up and saw Lily standing there. Lily shut the door behind her, leaning herself against it, obviously unaware that Carina was in the room.
"Oh God, what did I do?" Lily said aloud.
It was then that Carina heard muffled crying noises. Lily's entire body was shaking against the door, and she looked as if she was about to collapse.
Carina was tempted to say something, but deep down inside, she knew she shouldn't. So she kept her mouth shut and hid under her covers, hopefully to be unnoticed. And if Lily did see a body there, Carina would pretend to be asleep. She kept an ear open though, eavesdropping on anything and everything Lily was saying.
Lily slid down the length of the door, landing herself on the floor. She hung her head low, propping it slightly with her hands.
"I'm so stupid," she cried, "I, I love him."
Carina perked her eyes up, wondering what could have happened. It was obviously something to do with James, but what she couldn't figure out.
Footstep on the stairs followed by their roommate's voices caused Lily to spring to her feet. She ran to the bathroom, shutting the door tightly behind her. Carina heard the shower start, and knew that it was the one place where no one could hear you cry.
Carina got out of her bed just as two of her roommates entered the dorm room. She then left the room and headed straight toward the Common Room. She was determined to find James Potter and find out exactly what happened.
But when she got there, he wasn't in sight. His friends, however, were sitting right there. They weren't talking though, just sitting there. She knew something must be up. Instead of asking them though, she went straight toward the boy's dormitories and hurried up the stairs.
Once she found the room that the Marauders shared, she opened it up without knocking. She was surprised to find James lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling. He had a blank look on his face, emotionless.
"Potter, what the fuck happened?" she asked, her voice impatient and demanding.
He turned to look at her, but still showed no emotion.
"Potter, I'm not kidding, what did you do to Lily?"
"She dumped me," he answered, and then turned his head back to looking at the blank ceiling.
Carina looked like she had just been told that her father was actually from outer space. Lily dumped James? That couldn't be right, she was the one crying her eyes out in their room, and she loved him so much. That just couldn't be possible.
"She did what?"
"She dumped me," he answered, not looking at her when he spoke. Even his voice was blank. It was as if every inch of life had been taken from his body, and all that was left was skin and bones.
"Why?" she asked, ignoring how rude it sounded.
"Don't know," he answered with the same tone and look.
"I'm so sorry, James," Carina said as she backed out of the room and ran back toward her own room. She needed to see Lily, she needed to find out what was going on.
By the time she made it back, Lily was out of the shower and sitting on her own bed. She had her Potions book open and was furiously taking notes.
"Lily, what's going on?" she asked at once, her heart pounding from the constant running.
"Hmm, nothing, just doing some homework," Lily answered.
"No, what's going on with you and James. I just talked to him, he said you dumped him!" exclaimed Carina.
"Um, yeah," Lily truthfully answered, letting out a sigh as she did.
"Why?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Lily replied, going back to reading her textbook.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Lily lied.
And Carina knew for sure that it was a lie, because not only had she heard her crying earlier, but later that night as well...
Carina wasn't even sleepy yet, but had gone to bed nearly an hour beforehand. The entire room was dark, and she could hear the heavy breathing coming from the bed to her right.
But then she heard another noise, another muffled cry was let out to her left, Lily's bed. Lily was crying again.
"Lils, are you okay?" Carina whispered.
The sounds immediately stopped, and Lily didn't say anything.
Carina grabbed her wand from her nightstand and said, "Lumos." A millisecond later light appeared at the tip of her wand. She then got out of bed and walked over to Lily's bed.
"Lils, what's wrong?" she asked as she saw Lily's tearstained face.
"Did I do the right thing?" Lily asked.
"Hmm?"
"I shouldn't have broken up with him, I, I think I might love him," Lily confided to her best friend.
"Why did you call it off in the first place?" Carina questioned.
"I, I honestly don't know anymore…I guess, well, I guess that at the moment it felt like the right thing to do, but now, oh Carina, I miss him so much, and it's only been a couple of hours," Lily cried.
Carina let out a sigh as she remembered that it had taken her three hours to get Lily to actually fall asleep that night. The next night she heard Lily cry until nearly midnight, and she guessed that she only fell asleep out of exhaustion from crying so much. Each night after that she was able to get to sleep earlier and earlier, and fewer tears were shed. But it still took her a week to stop crying herself to sleep. And even after that, she still missed and obsessed over him all the time. In fact, most of her time was spent in the library. She studied all the time, even taking on extra projects just to keep her mind off of him. After about a month and half, Lily finally recovered from the breakup. It took six long weeks for her to start acting normal again. And she didn't start dating another guy until the winter after they graduated from Hogwarts, nearly a year after she and James broke up.
Carina could only pray that this time around wouldn't be quite so bad. But unfortunately, she had a feeling it would be even worse.
"I miss him so much," Lily admitted, lying back down on her bed and off of Carina's shoulder. "I miss his messy hair, you know the way that it'll never go straight. Even the heaviest magic couldn't change its position. I miss waking up next to him, finding his arms around me, and him looking straight into my eyes."
Carina didn't know what to say to that, only that she was jealous that she had never experienced that feeling after a breakup.
"Call me crazy, but I actually thought that he might be the one…I thought that maybe we'd get married someday, grow old together, the whole deal," Lily confessed. She didn't cry as she said this, her eyes didn't have any more liquid left to spare. Instead she just stated it, telling Carina her secrets.
"I can't believe it though, I'm so stupid. Here I was, willing to give up everything for him."
"Lils, you're not stupid," Carina assured her. "If anyone's stupid it's him. He doesn't know what he's missing. I mean, any guy would be lucky to have you."
"But I don't want just any guy, I want James," Lily miserably said.
"I know, I know," Carina replied, a sympathetic look on her face.
"There's just something about him, I can't explain it, but it's incredible. He makes me feel good about myself…He, as dumb as this sounds, he makes me feel like I could fly if I wanted to, without a broomstick."
"That's not dumb."
"He, he makes it seem like anything is possible, and that I could do anything crazy, but he'd still like me for me. I don't have to pretend around him, I can just be me," Lily admitted.
"That sounds nice."
"It is…but, but I can't believe that its gone. I'm never going to have that again, am I?"
"Lils, you can still have that…there are millions of guys out in the world, lots of guys will make you feel that way, it's just a matter of finding one," Carina told her.
"But what if there's not anyone to make me feel that way, what if James is the only one for me?" Lily asked.
"I thought you didn't believe in soul mates," Carina stated.
"I didn't."
Author's Note 2: Hey guys! I hope you all liked this chapter, and please remember to review! And just to let you all know, for the next couple chapters, I think that I'm going to alternate each character. Like last chapter was James, this chapter was Lily, the next will be James, etc. They'll eventually come together again once Lily and James are back together, I'm guessing that most of you do realize that they will end up together, after all, Harry's got to be born somehow, right?