Once again I own nothing you recognize:)

Disappear… disappear... disappear...

Lily was earnestly whispering the word over and over to herself... again and again and again in the small, feverish hope that her body would do exactly just that: disappear.

'Blast!' She moaned, wincing as her ears caught the depressing sound of loud footsteps multiplying outside her stall.

'Brilliant! Just what I need,' Lily rolled her eyes, 'Another version of how spotty Lily Evans made an absolute fool of herself!'

Lily bit at her knuckles, positively cringing as she heard what sounded like a rather amused fourth-year regale her shrieking friends with a more dramatic version of what had happened earlier at breakfast...

"Apparently, she told Potter that Adams gives the best snogs! And he yanked the hat right off her head!"

"Oh, I do feel a tad sorry for her!" simpered a second voice for whom Lily presently felt a silent contempt, "I mean, did you see? She looked absolutely ridiculous in that hair! I don't know what could have possibly possessed her to have it cut!"

"Camillus! Look at the time! We'll be late for Potions!"

Lily let out an internal sigh of relief, it was all she could do not to open the door to her stall, and horrify the girls with her dramatization of an indignant veela. If she had to endure yet another bleeding conversation about-

"Lily?"

Lily immediately raised her head from its pathetic, cowered position on her lap, nearly choking with fright.

"Remus?"

She couldn't mistake that voice anywhere.

"Remus, what are you doing here?"

Remus endeavored a soft chuckle. "Hiding in the stalls are we? I thought you had outgrown this method for evasion years ago,"

Inside the stall, Lily couldn't help but replace her small, sullen frown with a great, reminiscent smile, recalling—with a slight, hot flush on her cheeks—that it was exactly outside of this very stall nearly seven years ago that Remus Lupin had assured her that if it were any consolation to herself, he, personally, believed she wasn't a Weasley.

"What can I say?" Lily laughed, surprised she was still capable of the act, "Old habits are hard to break,"

"Too true," Remus succinctly agreed, and Lily lifted herself from the chipping seat of the toilet, settling, with a great deal of abandon, on the cool stone of the floor. On the other side, she could make out the faint rustle of Remus's robes. She felt the door stir quietly against her, and knew that her and Remus were resting shoulder to shoulder.

"So why aren't you at Ancient Runes? I didn't take you for a skiver,"

"You didn't think I'd possibly go without my brilliant partner! I'd be hopelessly lost!"

Lily rolled her eyes, smiling this time. Remus was the top student in Feltwater's class, followed closely only by herself.

"Now Lily—truly, you don't expect to stay in there forever?"

"Not forever," Lily reflected with a forefinger poised quizzically on her mouth, "Just for a few months! …Perhaps then I won't see a speck of James Potter," Lily added half-heartedly, frowning again despite all of her good cheer returned.

Nearby, Remus heaved a regretful sigh.

"Really Lily, he means well—he had no idea, he was only trying to help,"

"He's always trying to help, Remus! I know he's a good person, you've said loads of times that I should give him a chance, but I just—" Lily trailed off uncertainly, "I just—I can't wait for him to grow up forever, I'd be an old maid!"

Lily raked a slim hand through her poorly clipped hair in frustration.

"I just wanted him to leave me alone—alone!" repeated Lily in a loud, incredulous voice, "Just for one bloody day!"

"I'm so sorry Lily—perhaps go bald," Remus suggested, sounding almost serious in his jibe, "That might do the trick,"

"Of all the cheek!"

Lily quickly lifted the latch to her stall door, not at all surprised to see Remus scrambling clumsily to the exit with a wicked grin on his face.

"You've got to admit, Prongs," yelled Sirius distractedly over the loud, malevolent snarls of Professor Fennela's Venomous Tentaculas, "Things have progressed between you and Evans... they've gone from bad to worse,"

"Remind me again why you're my best mate?" James piped up frowning, crying a sudden, "Bloody hell!" as Peter's Tentacula hungrily seized him from behind with four of its many gnarled tentacles.

"Because you love me like a brother, and I've nowhere to live," Sirius answered glibly, pushing aside a hysterically whimpering Peter as he attempted to wrestle James off the particularly resistant Tentacula, "If you're interested though, this Tentacula looks like a promising rebound,"

"Clever," James retorted, gripping Lupin's gloved and outstretched hand as Peter tittered shamelessly at Sirius's impressive manipulation of the Tentacula's tentacles. It had now come to humorously resemble a giant, red pretzel.

James smoothed the special robes Professor Fennela had given the students earlier for protection.

"I want to visit her later, apologize,"

Remus immediately frowned at James.

"Don't. I think it would be best if you left her alone for a little bit."

James shot the pretzel-Tentacula a hopeless stare—oddly enough, he seemed to feel a distinct kinship with it.

"Is she that furious with me? Bloody hell, she must truly hate me,"

"She doesn't hate you, she's never hated you!" Remus brushed the hair out of his eyes with a smouldering air of impatience, securing the stopper on his occupied vile of Tentacula seeds.

"Well, she certainly doesn't love him, does she now, Moony?" Sirius muttered with a sharp note of bitterness in his voice, and Sirius knew he had said what had undoubtedly been plaguing James's mind that very second.

Looking miserable and defeated, James was rather content to spend the remainder of the class with his head buried under his arms, while Peter, fearfully unsure of how to share his input with the rest of the group, attempted to liven James's black mood by thrusting him a piece of sweating cheese he had apparently filched from his neighbor's plate the lunch before.

"Thanks, Wormtail. Really fabulous. Just... absolutely brilliant-"

"It was no trouble at all, Prongs! You know me, quick fingers and all!"

Sirius mimed writing on a chalk-board, "The... principles... of... sarcasm..."

Lily had been tapping her foot ceaselessly for a nearly an hour, her mouth a thin, hard line of disapproval as she stole yet another momentary glance from her watch, and quickly craned her neck once again to comb the bookshelves for the smallest glimpse of Douglas.

'I just spoke to him forty minutes ago! Where is he?' Lily thought urgently, twisting a frail wisp of hair between her thumb and forefinger nail whilst out of the corner of her eye, highly amused first-years took turns peeking and sniggering at her new hair from behind enormous, mile-high stacks of Transfiguration textbooks and Potion manuals. 'Do not hex first years, do not hex first years...'

"Evans!"

Lily instantly spun around, her eyes narrowing to slits at the nauseating sight of Agnes Bullstrode.

"Fancy meeting you here. Grown weary of the lavatory?"

"That depends," Lily managed to say calmly, resisting the monstrous urge to jab her wand up Agnes's raised nose, "Have you grown weary of MacNair's u-bend?"

Agnes reddened almost immediately, and Lily's lips stretched into a victorious sneer. Agnes still hadn't forgiven Lily for accidentally stumbling into the pair of them years ago, decidedly disrobed in the prefects bathroom.

"We're we not in a library, Evans, the rest of your hair-"

"Spare me your threats," Lily hissed, entirely fed up of being taunted, laughed at, and whispered about, "The best they'll do is roll a disinterested eye,"

"Evans, you're a-"

"Darling!"

Lily was half-relieved to spy a nervous-looking Douglas hovering uncertainly behind the 'Effective Counter-Curses' section. Half-relieved because had he not appeared, Lily was quite sure she'd have pulled a 'Marjorie' herself, and would have probably lit Agnes's hair on fire with an Incendio charm.

Agnes promptly bit her lip as though to keep from spitting out exactly what Lily was, and with an imperious twist of her heel, she angrily exited the library murmuring what sounded dangerously to Lily like "Filthy mudblood."

"So…" Douglas smiled delicately, "How are you?"

"Spectacular," Lily crooned, reaching for his hand, "Now that you're here!"

Douglas nodded, looking oddly to Lily as though his mind was slightly elsewhere, and Lily, worried, slowly closed the space between them, shifting the legs of her chair closer to his in order to properly probe what was troubling him, "Something wrong?"

"Oh, nothing, just—I'm afraid I can't, you know, the date for this weekend—" Douglas looked evasively at the bottom of his shoe, "I don't-I don't think I can make it,"

"Why not?" Lily inquired fiercely, unable to contain her irritation—they had planned this date for nearly a month! It seemed very unlike Douglas to simply shirk off his commitments with her. He had certainly prided himself in keeping them before!

"I'm really sorry, it's just that my mates—they think I'm spending a bit too much time with you,"

Lily swallowed, aware that her own friends were complaining of the same thing.

"Well, we have been inseparable lately," Lily was forced to admit, squeezing Douglas's fingers as he looked at her with his largest, most apologetic eyes,

"Maybe we should hold off on the date until the next Hogsmeade visit..."

Douglas looked absolutely thrilled. "You're the best, Lils!"

Lily had expected him to kiss her on the lips but was somewhat disappointed and embarrassed to realize he was actually aiming for her cheek.

"I promise, I'll make it up to you!"

"Sure," Lily tried to lift the corners of her mouth high enough to produce a convincing smile, 'I know he's terribly excited to be finally spending a weekend with his friends but does he have to be this happy? Does he have to be-'

Lily abruptly shook her head to stop herself from finishing the nasty thought. She couldn't become one of those frighteningly possessive girls... the ones she'd seen numerous times in classrooms, in corridors, clinging to their boyfriends anxiously as though for dear life—ruining well-formed friendships at will. She had to give Douglas his own personal space or she would inevitably drive him away.

"I swear! I'll do everything I can to make our date wonderful, better than you've ever expected!" Douglas assured her as though worried she wouldn't believe him, and Lily playfully poked him on the nose.

"Believe me, Doug... I have no worries."

Except Lily Evans had nothing but.

Seeing as how very little was said about Venomous Tentaculas in the books, I only had a small definition from UnknowableWiki to go by. So no, I've no idea just exactly how big the seeds are, if they would fit in a vile, whether the vines themselves have teeth, or are spiky. So... yet again shameless free reign, I apologize!! I also have no idea whether Lily Evans took herbology, she probably did... but I had to give James at least one class where he didn't have Lily as a classmate, poor sod.