A/N: Thank you so much to lyin', mustardgirl1128, Bad Mum, Kore-of-Myth, lilyre, Megsy42 and FollowMyLead for your lovely reviews! This chapter is quite long...but I hope I've been able to incorporate all the inspiration I've been blessed with!

Her Eyes: Winter

Lily Evans and I were civil, though essentially cold, to each other for the next three years. Gryffindor Tower might have brought us physically close, but our conversations were always polite and diplomatic, as if we were always treading on thin ice.

Perhaps we would never have become as entangled in each other's fates had it not been for a certain Gryffindor boy, named James Potter.

On the whole, I didn't like boys, but James was a special case. We were possibly the most overprotected students that Hogwarts had seen since the turn of the century. In James' case, it was because his parents were elderly, having attended Hogwarts around the same time as my grandparents, while my parents were just pushy, pure-blooded puppeteers who wanted a second chance at youth. We were also rather temperamental, able to go from melancholy to anger, to contempt, and then to peaceful camaraderie in the space of five minutes. We'd also clocked up several detentions together, usually for not having done our homework – I'd given up on being a model student for my parents.

But most importantly, James and I had met during a gathering of our parentals at the age of six, at a time when the mind is as open to impressions as freshly-fallen snow is to footprints. It's incredibly hard to brush someone off when you've known them for more than half your life. Or when your parents have a photograph of the two of you puddle-jumping in red and blue Wellington boots framed on the piano.

The only downside to our friendship was that I had been dubbed "the fifth Gryffindor boy" by people who didn't know me very well, even though it was most certainly not true. I had no time for the three others who shared James' dorm – Remus Lupin, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew. There were also those who thought we were an item waiting to happen, but although the thought crossed my mind, I knew he only ever had eyes for someone else.

I accidentally uncovered it one wintry afternoon, toasting marshmallows by the Common Room fire. For a few weeks, since Remus had gone home for the Christmas holidays, James had been keeping mostly to himself, leaving Sirius and Peter to maintain their reputation as world-class mischief-makers.

"I'm surprised you're still here at Hogwarts in the first week of January," I said, for it had been his first holiday spent at school. "How are you holding up, without your parents spoiling you every day?"

"I am doing quite well, thank you," he replied, taking a bite of white, vanilla marshmallow, and taking his time to chew and swallow it.

"Don't talk to me about a stifling home atmosphere," I sighed. "But even I wish I was home."

It had taken all of one week for the Christmas spirit to evaporate. Cooped up inside due to daily and brutal blizzards, Justin Mulciber, a fifth-year Slytherin, letting off some of his pre-OWL stress, decided to curse Mary McDonald, a first-year Gryffindor, reducing her to quacking and flapping about like a duck for a day. While the Slytherins maintained that it was no more than a practical joke, no more than something James and his mates would pull off, a lot of us were sure it was something darker.

"Oh, you know, with OWLs only a year away, it's time to get serious, isn't it? With studying n'all?" said James evasively.

"Wow," I said.

"You're so gullible, Marlene."

"I am not!" I knew better. Last year, the girls' hormones had kicked in, and my hours of sleep had been crippled by their incessant gossiping. This year I supposed it was the boys' turn.

James put his toasting-fork down, got up and walked to the window that overlooked the lake.

"What's the weather like out there?" I called. "Gryffindor-Slytherin snowball fight?"

"Almost," he said, as I joined him. We could see a male and a female figure standing on the middle of the lake, arguing vehemently.

"Lily Evans and Severus Snape?" I sniffed. "Hardly worth watching." At five foot seven, I was taller than both of them, and nowhere near as skinny.

"I don't like Snape," said James, wearing an expression I had never seen before. "He's in Mulciber's gang."

"He what?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Sure, Severus Snape was a gawky, greasy little Slytherin boy, but I'd never have picked him out as one of Justin Mulciber's mates.

"You heard me – they say he came into Hogwarts knowing more curses and hexes than all the seventh-years in Slytherin put together."

"What do you think he wants with Lily?"

James shrugged. "He seems to like hanging around brainy people he might be able to scam."

Still smarting from the "You're so gullible" comment, my mind began to concoct possible conspiracies. Before I knew it, the blood was thumping in my ears, and I was panicking. "She told me she was muggle-born, James. And Mary's parents are definitely muggles too; they're English teachers!"

If I had been a year older, perhaps I would also have had a shade of self-control. But at fifteen, I was all but entirely ruled by my impulses. I pointed my wand near where Snape's feet were planted.

"What are you doing?" shouted James, grabbing my arm.

"Getting Snape into a Watery Scrape?"

"And drenching Lily as well?"

"I wouldn't…"

"What, with your 'accuracy' when it comes to spells?"

Then it clicked for me.

"Hey, you don't need to get vicious just because you're sweet on her!" I exploded. "I mean…her birthday's coming up; you could use it as an excuse to buy her a new coat if we ruined her old one?"

Whatever souls were made out of, James' and Lily's were opposites of each other, like fire and ice, and I knew then that if he chose to chase her, he'd be in for a lot of knocks. But he always persevered – and that was what inspired me to learn the art of patience when it came to Matthew McKinnon. That, and James opened up my eyes to everything that made her wonderful.