James and Lily's strange relationship carried on in this way, stolen glances between (and often during) lessons; secret meetings in the dead of night; but, unfortunately, it was getting more and more difficult for them to keep their feelings secret as they grew. For James, it was substantially easier as he had expressed an interest in Lily for as long as most of the school could remember, therefore, he could keep making his flirtatious comments as usual and no one, not even his friends batted an eye. Lily, on the other hand, was having much greater difficulty as she was supposed to hate James – which was certainly no longer true – and was having more and more difficulty with every day to brush off his comments and glare at him instead of replying in the same manner.

One thing that made it even harder for Lily was the bullying which had increased over the first few weeks of term as the Dark Lord increased ever more in power and the Daily Prophet reported more and more wizards and witches that had been killed for their connections to muggle-borns like Lily. Many people had become cold with her instead of being friendly like they had for the past five years and Lily was sure she'd found it easier to make friends when she was in first year! Consequently, she found herself spending more and more time with the Marauders who were some of the few people who did not see her as unworthy of studying magic or a lesser being.

One of the worst things about the bullying, however, was James' reaction whenever it happened. His face would turn red or white and he would have to be held back to stop him from hitting someone. This didn't always help and was often in detention for hurting someone, he told Lily he didn't care because at least he was protecting her, but Lily worried for his safety as well.

At school, of course, she knew he was fine. But she did worry that if it did work out for them then he and his family (as well as Lily herself) would probably find themselves on the wrong side of the death eaters and would most likely end up dead. This was a thought that Lily had almost every time she went to sleep and was a common occurrence in her dreams which always happily started at her wedding. After these dreams she often thought about distancing herself from James but then she found herself in his company with his friends at break, or lunch – or else alone with just him most nights – and completely forgot about the whole thing.

That is…until one afternoon when she returned to the common room after lesson to find James and Sirius sat on the couch in front of the fire, both holding ice to their faces.

"What happened to you two?" She had asked them, afraid of the answer.

"My little brother and his gang." Said Sirius removing the ice for a moment only to return it almost instantly.

"What did they do?" She asked kneeling down on the carpet and looking up at the pair of them. She wanted to help them, particularly James, but wasn't really sure what to do – she wasn't particularly well practiced at any medical spells – so she ended up just leaning on James' arm slightly as she watched them. James and Sirius shared a look and there was a pause before James spoke.

"He was calling you names," He said "And I stood up for you because I can't stand to hear people going on like that – especially about you." He added and looked down into her eyes. There was a moment where Lily felt her heart flutter and she could feel the urge to kiss him increasing inside her until her thoughts changed and she looked away and stood up.

"You shouldn't have. Thank you," she added, not wanting to seem rude or unappreciative "but you shouldn't do that – not for me." She quickly walked straight up to her dormitory, but still heard Sirius ask 'what's her problem' as she left.

The truth was that Lily did have a problem – her worst fears were being realised and she now knew that there was only one thing she could do to save James from what would likely be a terrible life with her. A week ago, when Lily thought of her future with James, she imagined a big white wedding where they were surrounded by their friends and family, Sirius was the best man and she had convinced Petunia to be her maid-of-honour as they had become as good friends as they once had been. She saw it fade into having a home with him and she looked after their few children who all ran to hug their daddy when he walked through the door after a long day at work.

This image was gone. It had been replaced with constant running and hiding – never living a normal life – it ended with her crying over James' still body and she was confronted by a pale man with red eyes. She knew the chances of Voldemort himself killing her and James were slim, but she knew that whoever did it, it would be on his orders. Lily couldn't bring herself to force that life on James. He was a pureblood! He had nothing to fear from the dark lord – not really. But if he married her then there would be a near certainty that they would both be killed and Lily couldn't think about that. She made up her mind as of what she would do on their date that night.

At about half eleven, she crept down to the common room where James was sat alone in front of the dying fire.

"Hey." She said as she approached him and he moved over to make room for her to sit next to him. Lily perched on the edge of the seat so as not to be too close to him. She could still smell him and the crackling of the fire which made her almost change her mind, but with one glance at her purple and slightly swollen cheek reminded her of why she had to do this.

"James," she started, her heart beating out of her chest as she looked into his brown eyes and almost melted.

"Lily. What was that about before. I know you want to keep this a secret but you actually kind of hurt my feelings about the way you handled it." James told her. He looked hurt and Lily immediately remembered what she was doing there.

"James. Listen. This isn't going to work out. I can't watch you get hurt for me. I can't watch you ruin your life because of who I am – it's too much. That's why I reacted that way. I'm sorry James, but this is over." Lily stood up and left, tears in her eyes.

"Lily. Lily, no, please." She heard his voice and his steps following her as she walked towards her dormitory. She was halfway up the stairs when she heard the stairs collapse into a slide as he had attempted to follow her up them. Lily didn't turn around and she only let herself cry in silence once she had safely crept into her room and crawled into her bed without waking any of her dormitory mates.

The sun rose the next morning, sending red and orange light streaming into the room, waking most of the girls, except Lily who had not slept a wink, and it was obvious from her red, bleary eyes and mess of hair.

"You Ok, Lily?" Mel asked.

"Yeah. Just couldn't sleep." Lily answered quickly before locking herself in the bathroom to make herself look vaguely decent – or at least so that no one would be able to tell the night she'd had.

At breakfast, she managed to glimpse James through a couple of Gryffindor girls who were whispering and giggling to one another. He looked just as bad as she felt and, though he was surrounded by his friends he was not as chatty as he had been the other day and from the looks of things they were trying to figure out why.

Transfiguration was awkward as well, as she sat next to James, and Remus seemed to be aware that Lily was down as well in potions. In fact, by the end of the day, Lily felt even worse than she had on the morning and went to the library at the end of the day where she sat working on her transfiguration essay that she had been set. Soon she was joined at her table by someone else and when she looked up she saw that it was Severus. Honestly, he was probably the last person she wanted to see right now. Lily decided to simply ignore him and so she continued with her work like he wasn't there.

"I'm sorry, Lily." He said, she scoffed but said nothing. "Seriously. I'm sorry for everything that's happened."

"You don't know half of what I'm going through right now Severus," She snapped. "I'm fed up of your apologies. I can see you killing me one day and then begging for my forgiveness because you've changed. If you want forgiveness, then earn it. Until then, leave me alone" She spat the last words and picked up her books, stuffed them in her bag and then turned and left the library.

She got to the common room and saw James sat chatting with his friends and, even though it was only half past seven, she went straight to bed claiming that her lack of sleep the night before had left her extremely tired. This was, of course, true but she knew that she would not sleep much better that night.

Yay! New chapter. I found this quite hard to write because I ship Jily so bad, but I don't think it's a real spoiler if I say they end up together. Sorry this took so long; I will try to be quicker with the next one. See you soon and don't forget to review! – Chescaannie x