Being a Gryffindor was harder than it looked, but that didn't mean that she didn't have her moments of accidental bravery. Sirius had finished his detentions for the prank he pulled on Lucius and James was off doing god knows what, so she was very happily enjoying lunch with her friends when it happened.
"My love, you need to stop eating those sweets. What will happen to the muscles I love so much?" Remus swatted away Sirius' sneaky hands trying to steal away his chocolates, growling lowly in his throat as he curled protectively over them. "Back off, mine." He shoved another sweet between his teeth just to make a point, followed quickly by a piece of bacon off the offender's plate. He just grinned into his food as his best friend squaked indignantly and looked around dumbfounded for help.
"He's a growing boy, mate, you've just gotta let him eat his fill." Peter shrugged before diving in for a piece of his own, narrowly avoiding getting his fingers sliced off by the knife that appeared in Sirius' hands.
Quick to defuse a tense situation, Lily grabbed his hand and twisted until the knife fell, grabbing a few slices of toast and the rest of her bacon before dragging her friend out of the Great Hall. They didn't speak until she sat down in a soft spot of grass by the lake. "Sit, eat and then we're going to talk." She hoped her voice left no room for argument but it looked like Sirius was suddenly too exhausted to fight back anyway. She watched him wolf down everything she handed him until she was wiping the grease off her hands into the grass beneath them. "I know that food being stolen before meant you weren't going to eat. I hope you learn that that isn't the way that is here."
They sat in comfortable silence, neither knowing what they had left behind at a stunned table. They just saw friends helping each other, the rest of the watchful eyes watched a muggleborn stand up to a knife welding Black and drag him out like a scolded child.
Lily Evans was confused but happy to help...until it got to be a little too much. She kept getting asked questions from people about how to calm down their friends like she was some brain healer or an expert on the topic. "Lily, Dua won't stop shaking, what do I do?" Shaking usually means dehydration, at the very least focusing on that should calm her down. She repeated the words her mother spoke all that time ago when Petunia almost passed out on the way home from school. "Lily, Peter is shut up in his room and I can't get him to come down." "Lily, how do I get my friend to eat?" "Lily…" "Lily…" "Lily…."
She shut herself up in her dorm room, asking quietly to make sure no one but her roommates were allowed up unless it was someone looking to comfort her. She was surprised when Sirius pushed open her door after knocking, looking around in wonder at her room. "No wonder we're not usually allowed up here, you girls have much nicer rooms!" Lily didn't have the energy to ask him how he got past the stairs, simply curling deeper into her blankets to try and avoid the world for a few more minutes. "Come on Lily Pad, you look like you could use a hug."
"Lily Pad? For that I should shove you out the window." She was smiling through so she let him sit on the end of her bed. "Second year is so hard, everyone expects you to be able to handle everything now! And I would but everyone keeps asking me questions and I don't know why."
Her friend blushed straight to the tips of his ears, ducking his head. "That might be my fault." When she was too stunned to curse him for whatever prank he must have pulled, Sirius continued. "When you helped me last week with the whole, almost killing Peter over a scrap of food thing...No one can usually calm down a Black when we get aggressive. It's like an instinct to hurt that hibernates until we can't force it to sleep anymore. Narcissa keeps a good face so people leave her alone, Bella's is just constantly awake and that's why she's the way she is and me...I don't know, no one has ever seen it before."
"Because you aren't like the rest of them. You have real friends that love you." She punched his shoulder, laughing as he pretended to have a broken arm, rolling off her bed. "Get out of my room before someone really hurts you."
"I don't see how anyone could hurt me more than you." Sirius winked as he disappeared and Lily truthfully believed that if she stayed friends with that boy, her eyes would roll out of her head.
True to her beliefs, Lily ended up in the hospital wing curled up in a corner bed drawing out her headache on a scrap piece of parchment. The hustle and bustle of the room was calming, the routine tinging when Madame Pomfrey would pick up a potion or the scraping of the plastic rings on the curtain rods. "You seem to be at home here more than your friend Mr. Lupin. Is there anything that I should know about?"
"No, Madame. I just needed a quiet place to focus." They shared an unspoken agreement on how no matter how many people were in the hospital wing, it was so much better than anything they could do in the outside world.