On the morning of Valentine's Day, all of the Gryffindor students woke up to a song being played loudly on Sirius's turntable in the common room. For some reason Sirius had gotten up a little early and apparently felt a great deal less bitter about what day it was than many others are known to be; at least enough to feel like playing "Love Is All Around" by the Troggs loud enough to wake everyone up. James was reminded of Sirius's first morning at his house during the holidays, though this time the music was preferably calmer to wake up to than Jimi Hendrix, and it even made James start to feel a little happy about it being Valentine's Day as he got dressed.

James went into the Great Hall for breakfast quite early and discovered that only one of his friends was already there at the section of the Gryffindor table where they usually sat. Lily looked very beautiful that morning, sitting up straight and looking through a chapter of Potions as she politely waited for others to get there before she ate. Today she had part of her hair tied back in a green velveteen ribbon that matched her eyes perfectly. As James approached her from her left he suddenly felt a surge of excitement for the time he had to steal to talk to her alone.

"Good morning," he said as he sat down next to her, adorning the greeting with a kiss on her forehead as she turned to him. "You look pretty."

"Thank you," she said, smiling warmly. "Happy Valentine's Day."

James smiled guiltily and then said, "I have a confession to make."

"What?"

"I didn't get you anything."

"Oh," she said with a careless wave of her hand. "It doesn't matter. I didn't get you anything either."

"Well, traditionally I don't think you're necessarily expected to as much as the guy..."

"Oh, come on. Don't be old-fashioned."

"Fine, no gifts or anything like that. But let's do something really nice tonight."

"Like what?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said consideringly. "Go somewhere we've never gone together before."

"With you gentlemen and that map of yours, that shouldn't be difficult."

"Shhh," he said, putting his finger to her lips. "You don't talk about that in public."

"As if you guys take very drastic measures for security, calling each other those silly nicknames," she laughed as she pushed his hand away.

"We can use our nicknames and whisper about it in public because we're Marauders. You can't talk about it at all, cause you're not one."

"I'm as good as, now that I know everything!"

"Nah, I really don't think we could accept you as one of us," he said just to get on her nerves. "It's more like a men's club anyway. When we're not sneaking around the school we drink beer and watch dirty movies."

She laughed, nudging him with her elbow just as Sirius and Peter appeared and sat down.

"Oh no!" Lily suddenly interrupted Sirius, who had opened his mouth to say hello. "I completely forgot, I'm supposed to be eating with Noriko so I can talk to her about something. I'll see you guys later."

Just like that she had left, and as Sirius forked sausages onto a plate he said, "And what are everyone's plans for this unforgivably fluffy holiday?" Even as he made the negative statement, he was smiling and his tone was light and cheerful.

James shrugged. "I don't know. Probably hanging out in the Room of Requirement with Lily or something."

"Oh, I don't think so, Jim," Sirius said right away. "I'm taking Sophia to the Room of Requirement."

"Oh. Whatever. We can find somewhere else to go."

"Er...Is that exactly fair?" Peter questioned. "With how many times Sirius has used that room for dates, and the one time you want it..."

"No, I really don't care," James assured. "Something about using that room just doesn't seem...I don't know...classy, to me."

"Well, it's a hell of a lot more creative than going to the Three Broomsticks for the hundredth time, Prongs," Sirius said, almost sounding offended.

"No need to get touchy," James laughed. "That just isn't my style. Besides, something gives me the feeling Lily and Sophia wouldn't exactly be impressed by the same things."

Peter and Sirius laughed as Remus came up and sat down with them. The first thing he said was, "I'm going to smash your turntable, Padfoot."

The others laughed some more.

The first class of the day that all four of the boys had together was Divination. They had all decided to take it their last year to ensure that they had a class together that they could be lazy in. In fact, it had become one of the most enjoyable hours of school for them because the teacher, Professor Fangora, was very easy-going and didn't take the subject too seriously.

"Good afternoon, class," she greeted the room at the beginning of the hour. "Well, today we were supposed to review for your test on tarot readings tomorrow, but fortunately for you, in order to do that test I need the book I record your marks in which I left at my husband's house this weekend because I'm a dingbat."

There was an eruption of instant applause from the class, who had been expecting a very boring study hour today.

"And since it's Valentine's Day," Professor Fangora continued, "and since you're all still recovering from the holidays and don't want to think too much anyway, I thought we'd do something a little fun. So I talked to Professor Phlox and he gave me some of these from the greenhouse."

She held up two flower pots full of pansies, one with purple ones and the other with yellow ones.

"Pansies?" said Monty Clubber, who was sitting close enough to identify the flowers. "We have normal stuff like that in our greenhouse?"

"Actually, Mr. Clubber, pansies are used quite often for magic, but especially most magic involving romance," she explained. "Pansy pollen is one of the most important ingredients in making love potions. Obviously I can't teach you how to make a love potion because not only does it have nothing to do with Divination but it's also illegal."

The class laughed.

"However, there is something kind of fun that we can do with pansies today that I thought would be appropriate for this holiday. We are going to use them to reveal our future love lives."

There was a mixture of various reactions from the class, including Arnaud Doisneau asking, "Is she serious?"

Laughing, Professor Fangora waved her arms to quiet the class. "Don't take this that seriously. It's completely unprecise and unproven magic, not to mention not a kind of fortune telling that's commonly used for people your age. Anyway, to do this you will want to take two petals - from the purple pansies if there is already a specific love interest in your life and from the yellow pansies if there's no one yet - and a couple of leaves from a weeping tree that are on this table. Get a bowl and grinder from the cabinet and crush the petals and leaves in it in a circular motion, adding a small hair from your head into the mixture as you do so, until you have revolved the contents of your bowl ten times. Then you will attempt to get a glimpse at your future love life or your future with your special someone by looking at the shapes at the bottom of your bowl and being very creative about what they could possibly look like."

Monty asked, "Did you make this all up?"

"Oh no, this method is in one of my Divination books, I swear," she said with a laugh.

"This is so lame," Sirius said as he and the others got in line to get their petals and leaves. As they stood in line Professor Fangora got bowls from the cabinet in the back of the room and passed them out to them.

"Um, Professor?" James called. "Sirius is going to need at least five."

"Why is that?" she asked.

"One for every girl."

Everyone who had heard this laughed.

"In fact, maybe you just shouldn't participate in this, Padfoot," Remus said to him. "I don't think you have enough hairs on your head."

James and Peter laughed even harder, and Sirius just rolled his eyes.

Once the boys were seated back at their table with their four bowls, three of them with purple flower petals inside and one with yellow, all of them but Sirius started selecting hairs from their heads to pull out. Sirius, who never listened very intently to instructions, was already grinding his petals unceremoniously.

When they were all done, they picked up their bowls and peered into them searchingly. The first comment to come out was Sirius saying, "What the hell?"

They broke out into laughter.

"This doesn't look like anything," James said.

"I think I can kind of see a...ladle," Remus said, turning his bowl. "Or is it a burrow?"

"Doesn't a burrow usually symbolize a secret or something?" Peter asked.

He shrugged. "Don't know what that's supposed to mean."

"Seeing anything, gentlemen?" asked Professor Fangora as she passed.

"Nothing," James answered.

"Well, let me have a look," she said, walking around to stand behind him and taking his bowl. As she studied it carefully, a look of recognition settled on her face. "Well, here's a bell. That means marriage. That's a happy thing to have in your bowl."

"Way to go, Prongs," Sirius said half-jokingly, leaning back in his chair and giving a couple applauding claps.

"Wait a minute," Fangora said with interest, looking even closer in James's bowl. "Wow, this is a very complex fortune, Mr. Potter. You have double-meaning symbols in here...Oh. Oh, that's not happy at all..."

The faces of the four boys fell in unexpected disappointment.

"This is saying...This means that if you go through with that commitment with the person you love...then it's going to...mean death for both of you." She said the last part so quietly that they could hardly hear it, as if she wasn't sure she should actually be telling them or not.

The boys eyed each other with very uneasy looks, and Professor Fangora looked at them and immediately forced a smile. "Well, come on. You can't take these things seriously. I mean, you're not actually thinking about marriage at your age, anyway. Are you, Mr. Potter?" She looked down at him, not necessarily expecting an answer. "Like I said, this isn't even usually meant for wizards who are sixteen or seventeen years old."

With that, she walked away to go assist another table. The four continued to look at each other uncomfortably, and then Sirius barked loudly in short laughter.

"What the heck was that all about?" he wondered.

"No kidding," Peter said. "I thought this was supposed to be a fun and light activity."

"I wonder if she got in a row with her husband over the weekend or something," Remus said casually. "Being mad can make you misread predictions, can't it?"

"I bet that's it," Peter said.

Sirius, who was leaning back with his feet on the table chewing on a quill now and had completely forgotten about his own bowl, rolled his head lazily to the side at James, who didn't look like he was even listening to their optimistic explanations. He nudged him with his elbow. "Hey. You're not actually buying that rubbish, are you?"

James sat up, snapping into reality, and looked at him. "Oh. Yeah...No, of course I'm not. I mean, that sounds ridiculous."

"Yeah, it does," Peter agreed. "How is marrying Lily going to result in you both dying? Unless you drive each other so crazy you kill each other?"

James forced a laugh as the others chuckled. But as soon as they looked away from him again, he felt his smile fall.

Shortly after the last class had gotten out that day, James was walking away from his Charms class toward the dormitories by himself, his hands in the pockets of his robes and his face looking down at his feet dolefully. Because he wasn't looking where he was going, he ran right into a girl who had been turned toward the wall of the hallway talking to a friend she was now waving goodbye to. He said, "Sorry, excuse me" and turned to face her, only to see that it was Lily. As soon as their eyes met something was already wrong; once she recognized it was him she looked very sorry for some reason, and in a strange way he didn't really want to see her right now.

"James," she said, "I couldn't find you at lunch."

"I was outside," he explained.

"Oh. Well...I'm really sorry, but I promised Noriko she could interview me for this paper she has to do for Muggle Studies, and she thinks the only night she'll have a lot of time to work on it is tonight."

James registered what this meant and then said, "Oh. That's fine."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean for it to be so inconvenient," she said almost shyly, looking genuinely regretful. "I'll still be able to meet you later, but it'll just be late."

"That's okay, it's no big deal," he said. "You can just find me later tonight, then."

"Okay," she said, smiling with a kind of forced relief. Then she tilted her head to the side questioningly and said, "You alright?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Okay," she said again. Then for a moment it seemed to be the time she should kiss him goodbye before walking away, but for some reason it just wouldn't happen in the chilled space between them for that instant. She just said, "I'll see you later," and turned to walk away.

James watched her sadly as she left, not bothering to continue walking himself, and wondering what was wrong with him. He was almost relieved that he and Lily weren't having a date early tonight. He didn't know if he would be able to act normally happy with her after what he had heard Professor Fangora say today.

He didn't understand why it was affecting him so much. That prediction didn't even make any sense. How could they be in such serious danger like that in their future?

As he started walking slowly, his foot slid on something that was on the floor. He looked down and saw that someone had dropped a few pages of today's Daily Prophet that were now under his foot. Before even leaning over to look at it the headline on the top page caught his eye: "Investigations Reveal Possible Pattern In Death Eater Targets." James leaned over and picked up the page. Beside the article was a moving photograph of the ruins of a building that Death Eaters had destroyed. Suspended in the air above the charred, smoking ruin was the Dark Mark, the snake slithering in and out of the eyes and gaping mouth of the skull. As James stared at it, the pitch black voids of its hollow eyes seemed to bulge and stare right through him.

A sudden freezing thought entered his head right then. All of the students at the school were living away from home inside the cozy, safe wallsof Hogwarts, and James had lost himself in the routine school life and forgotten about the threat of the Death Eaters just like everyone else did as soon as they were done reading the latest news on the subject. But what if it was something much more serious than they realized? What if things were happening in the magic world that were going to change their lives forever as all of the students sat in class all day trying not to doze off as they took notes? What if this Death Eater problem was going to go on a lot longer than most realized?

Maybe the prediction Professor Fangora had made when looking into his bowl made a lot more sense than it seemed. Lily was Muggle-born, after all. Couldn't that mean that she could be in some danger in the future if this threat continued until then? Couldn't that mean that by association with her, he could end up in danger, too?

James dropped the paper to the floor and crossed his arms uncomfortably. What if the prediction was true? What could he do about it? If he never ended up marrying Lily, would she still die and he just wouldn't because he wouldn't be at the wrong place at the wrong time with her?

Don't be stupid, James thought to himself. Nobody is going to die.

But no matter what he told himself, he couldn't seem to relax. He was bothered the rest of the day, and unconsciously made the decision to spend it by himself in the library where he could read to distract himself, the last place Lily would think to find him on a day that teachers weren't likely to give enough homework to keep him there until very late at night.