Dearly Beloved, this story got munched by my computer. Thankfully I had most of it stored on our ultra-complexicated home network. Sympathise, if you will. Still, I think this chapter is possibly better than the one I had originally written.

8 - The first casualty of war.

Was it just Lily's imagination, or was Amos Diggory avoiding her? She was torn between two options. Being a strong, assured young woman who could look out for herself, she could brush it off as his stupidity, or being a delicate, tender petal with insecurities that she hid from the rest of the world (and which no one but James Potter could see) she could weep a lament for the fact that she was clearly unloved. Mathematically speaking, these two reasonably equal and opposite pointing vectors should cancel out to produce no reaction. Lily had little knowledge of mathematical vectors, but this is exactly what she did. And hence, the students of Hogwarts, upon sighting their gloriously stunningly emerald orbed head-girl, were lead to believe that nothing was amiss in the world, which was slightly deceptive.

Lily could not help the slightest twingling twinge of doubt, though. One day, a week after the Flashback-Of-Great-Significance, she was having a particularly bad Transfiguration lesson, when Professor McGonagall told her that her grades had dropped to an Acceptable, and she would have to pull her socks up and her finger out and McGonagall would kindly find her a Transfiguration tutor. Morosely, she left the classroom just in time to hear snatches of a conversation. Polite girls didn't like to eavesdrop, but they still had the decorum not to put their fingers in their ears. Lily couldn't help but hear.

"...awful."

"I know! And she can't remove it."

"Madam Pomfrey? She can remove anything!"

"Not this. I heard..." Lily's ears strained to hear "...possibly permanent."

"...hospital wing?"

"Yep."

"Poor Amos."

"Who cares about Amos? He's not quite that popular. Poor Lily Evans."

And Lily gasped, turned in the opposite direction, and ran. By the time she had reached the hospital wing, her cheeks were tinted a delicate pink, her hair was windswept and interesting and her eyes were gleaming with sympathy. She swept in.

"Oh Amos!" She cried, sweeping towards him like a empathetic angel. "Whatever happened to you?" Amos looked up sulkily, but upon seeing that she did not withdraw in shock at his unseemly appearance, he attempted a suave grin.

"Hey sugar." He leant forwards, hoping for a kiss, but she wasn't quite that generous. His face was, after all, green and swollen, and it wouldn't do to kiss someone with a slogan across their head. A slogan that stated concisely and to-the-point exactly what part of the anatomy he was considered to resemble.

"Can't Madam Pomfrey remove it?" Lily asked, eyes welling with compassion.

"Sure, babe. She will eventually. I'll be back to my ultra-handsome state in no time."

"Does it hurt?"

"No, baby honey. Only my pride. Or it would, if I had any." He chuckled.

"I'm glad. It means I won't have to jinx them quite as hard as I was planning. Who did this to you?"

"Sugar babe, didn't you hear? It was the Marauders, only there was no proof or anything so they got away with it."

"Didn't you see them? This is the last straw. They've gone too far. I'm going to get justice, and then we can go on the next Hogsmeade trip together, I'm going to curse them right into next September, when they will awake and discover that their eyeballs are pointing the wrong way, their innards will be so tied in knots that -"

"Look, we can't do this anymore."

"Do what? Sit in the hospital wing thinking up delectable methods of torture for our enemies?"

"We can't be together."

There was silence, and then the sound of smashing glass and a profanity uttered by Madam Pomfrey, who had been so transfixed by the drama that she had dropped a potion, which was now seeping through her shoes and turning her toenails blue.

"You're dumping me?" Lily whispered, tears in her beautiful almond shaped green orbs. (Her green orb earrings may also have been dripping.)

"It's for the best, babe." Amos assured her. "The Marauders have sent me notes - they'll hex me even worse if I don't ditch you now."

"That's for the best? But I thought you liked me!"

"Well yeah, I do. You're very pretty."

"So this had nothing to do with my mind and personality?"

"No. Look, I really don't want to be hexed."

"This isn't the right thing to do."

"Face facts babe," he laughed. "Me getting hexed is not right."

"No, the right thing to do is to stand up to things like this! People should have no right to trap us - to govern our freedom for their own leisure. We have to be brave, and... why are you shaking your head?" She demanded.

"Just accept it, there's nothing we can do."

"There is! I thought I was worth more than this to you!"

He looked at her, bemused, and scratched his eyebrow with a bewildered countenance.

"Well, you're pretty hot, but so am I, and I won't be if they permanently mar my face."

"You don't appreciate me for who I am?" Lily was stricken.

"Sure I do. I appreciate your body."

"I thought you were brave, but I realise you have never been and never will be a Gryffindor! Goodbye, Diggory!" Lily turned, and then as an afterthought swung back and placed a sharp slap across his face before sprinting away with tears threatening to fall.

She ran from the Entrance Hall, out towards a particular tree in the grounds. The day was overcast, almost raining. There was a shout of

"Hey! Lily!"

and footsteps pounded behind her. She bit back a sob of distress, and ran on, before throwing herself down under the massive beech. She drew her perfect knees to her chest, and clung to them tightly as though holding herself together. Her eyes shone with distress and she tried not to cry.

"Lily? Are you okay?" she heard him sit next to her.

"Leave me alone, Potter. This is your fault."

"I'm sorry. Sirius heard me complaining and he decided to take matters into his own hands. I should never have told him I was unhappy. I didn't mean for this to happen. I can fix things with Diggory if you want. Please, Lily, I want to see you happy."

"You're so insensitive. And a liar. Leave me alone, and don't ruin things any more." She got up and left, and he sat there alone for some time, watching the reflections darken on the lake.

Remus was in the library. This wasn't particularly unusual, really. He went there a lot. Currently, he had finished his massive piles of N.E.W.T. Level homework, and was looking for something nice to read. Such things were slightly hard to find in the Hogwarts library, but it was possible, and so he searched for the most attractive cover. Some people will tell you that, when looking for books, you must never go by the most attractive cover, and maybe this is true for a few overlooked and unsightly novels that have long been underrated, but for the most part he knew aesthetics would not let him down.

He paused, his hand stroking the air above the nestled rows of spines, and his hand hovered momentarily over a very promising cover. He squinted at it, tilting his head. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone? Odd title. His fingers closed in for the kill, and-

"Remus!"

Sirius black picked his way through the shelves, somewhat disdainfully. He regarded Remus with a sharp eye from beneath his artfully arranged hair, and Remus looked back. For a short moment they stood and looked at each other. A rebel with a sharp attitude, who cared deeply for those he loved, although he was too much man to admit it, a lot of the time. A soft-spoken werewolf who, more often than not, could be found curled up with a book, and loved chocolate dearly, as it logically follows that anyone with a monthly problem would. Daring grey eyes met gentle, uncertain brown, and for a moment all was still across that gulf of turbulent books. And you know what they felt?

Sort of nothing, really. They were two young men of vastly differing personalities, possibly less different than some would think, who were good mates. And what momentary or lasting attraction did their relationship hold? None, because they were two teenaged boys, amazingly more obsessed with the next prank and their camaraderie than love and sex. If they did happen to fall in love, rest assured that they would never do anything against their character, it would be with a girl.

"Prongs is getting wet." Sirius said, prodding a book with a nonchalant air. "Evans upset him, and he's sitting in the rain. Rather excellent example of a macroclimate-microclimate situation. Shakespeare would be proud."

"Would this be somehow related to your Diggory hex?"

"Might be." Sirius shrugged, but Remus has discerning, and he caught the faint gleam of a smug mischief-maker in his friends eye.

"You know, Sirius, you could go and find Lily and apologise. Tell her it was your fault and all."

"Why? Sounds like effort."

"It would make Prongs happy. And we wouldn't have to hear him go on and on about how miserable it made him when Lily was miserable."

"...I can't argue with that. Very well, for friendship's sake. And it's only fair, I s'pose."

"How considerate of you."

"I am a capital chap. Well, I had better be off. Good thing I've got the map."

And the two young men sauntered off, one to find Lily and one to find James. Lily, to the fortune of Sirius, was surprisingly amenable, and agreed to accept that James had not been responsible. Sirius, you see, was not James, who was the only person she refused to listen to on the basis of personal grounds.

And to content herself after the depressing ordeal of being rejected, she wrote a sad letter telling of being dumped to the mysterious and charming Jet, and got a delightfully sympathetic reply.