Wow, it's been long since I've updated... which is usually, almost always, on a daily basis! I was away for a bit, on a vacation. Anyhoo, a lot of patience will be required for this chapter... it's a bit longer than the others, I'm afraid. Thank you, really, for still being here.

In response to a lovely review I've gotten ages ago, queenofthefaeries: No, I have nothing against the author Douglas Adams, or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I happen to be looking for a name, and lifted 'Douglas Adams' from a list of authors on the internet... yes, lame.

I own nothing you recognize. If did, I'd be filthy rich. :D

James scrambled numbly to his feet, his face white with disbelief, air coming in sharp, shallow gasps as Sirius, who had witnessed his momentary collapse on the floor, ran pell-mell down the length of the corridor, shouting, "Blimey, Prongs! You alright?"

James swallowed what felt unpleasantly like a huge lump of coal. He seemed to have lost the ability to speak, his head spinning as though confunded, pounding insistently with what he just saw—with what he had seen days before—Lily crying weakly with her fingers crumpled at her puckered mouth, Lily's shoulders shaking... and then, as though his mind could not help itself, James saw, with a sickening twist in his stomach, the way Lily's smile widened whenever she caught a passing glimpse of Douglas in the Great Hall, the spring in her step as she ran up, screaming, to hold him at the end of every breakfast feast.

'I'm going to make that bastard, pay,' James seethed through clenched teeth, slamming his fist hard on the closet door, so that he heard, with a sneering satisfaction, the high squeal of Roberta Bowles.

With a bewildered howl of, 'Prongs, what d'you think you're doing?' from Sirius, James raised his wand purposefully, and stabbed at the air, bellowing in a voice nearly inarticulate with fury, "Reducto!"

It was as though a giant canon ball had shot straight through the heart of the broom closet, shattering the ancient wood into a million, indefinable pieces, showering James in a blindingly thick, almost impenetrable haze of fat, choking dust.

Roberta and Douglas fell apart from each other's embrace.

"Merlin, I don't believe it," Sirius's wand-hand fell limp at his side, the expression on his face an odd cross between disbelief, and—James couldn't believe it—jealousy?

"Douglas Adams—and Roberta Bowles?"

Roberta shifted her gaze warily from James to Sirius, doing-up the buttons to her shirt with startling efficiency, while Douglas, to James's contempt, regarded them both with a cool, withering look as though he had spotted two rather irksome flies.

"Impedi-" Douglas began in a roar, his wand emerging swiftly from his cloak pocket, but James stood too close to him, and with a scathing laugh, he kicked viciously at Douglas's wand, sending it flying with a harsh clank against a neighbouring wall.

A horrified scream left Roberta's quivering mouth, and Douglas did not think twice. Painfully aware of his defencelessness, he lunged at James head first, snarling, forcing James into a thrashing heap on the flagged-stone floor.

"I'm going to kill you!" James howled savagely, trying with all his mustered strength to push the crushing weight of Douglas off him, "Incarcerous!"

Thin, dark ropes erupted with a bang from the end of James's wand, twisting themselves furiously around Douglas like bloodthirsty serpents.

"You don't want to do this, Potter…" Douglas's voice was dripping acid, betraying any trace of humiliation at having to peer up at James, bound in ropes, from the floor,

"Just one of the many things you're disastrously wrong about, Adams," James spat out his name as though it were marmite,

"I'll tell Lily, you know..." Douglas whispered to him in a low, menacing voice,

"You will? And tell her what?" James hissed, speaking so violently his spit flew, "That you stuck your tongue down Roberta's throat? No. I'm afraid the pleasure will be all mine-"

Douglas gave a cruel laugh, "You're even thicker than I thought!"

James tightened the grip on his wand. "Care to repeat that?"

Douglas shot him an exceptionally contemptuous glare.

"D'you honestly think Lily will believe you?"

James froze.

"Lily would know I was telling the truth," James spoke with decidedly more confidence than he felt, and Douglas was easily aware of it.

"Will she?" he whispered softly, a hideous sort of pleasure clouding his eyes as he watched James's face fall, crumple, "Or will she refuse to trust the word of the boy who humiliated her in front of the entire school? Refuse to trust the word of the boy who she's hated for nearly seven years-"

"That's enough!" snarled Sirius, looking angrier than James had ever seen him, the tip of his wand meeting Douglas's forehead, "Nobody speaks to James that way!"

Before Douglas could open his mouth to speak, several doors swung open from beyond the corridor, and students, in chattering groups of three and four, happily exited their classrooms with book bags swaying beneath their arms.

Sirius withdrew his wand immediately, his dark eyes posing a murderous threat. Grabbing a wordless James firmly by the shoulder, he gazed unpityingly at Roberta, who sat, her lips opening and closing like a fish.

"You've stripped him of his clothes before, I presume? Inches of rope shouldn't prove to be too difficult."

Lily lifted her wand lazily in the near-darkness, her eyes rolling as she spotted what seemed to be her fiftieth suit of armour of the night.

'I don't even know why Dumbledore even bothers with these patrols, anymore,' Lily reflected wearily, lowering her wand to her waist, 'It's nearly been an hour since I started my patrol, and so far I've caught nothing but a bad headache.'

Lily furiously swept a stray tangle of red hair away from her face, settling herself for a moment, tiredly against a nearby wall. She hadn't received a wink of sleep the night before, and was now regretting not showing up for the dinner that night.

'Pragna was right—I shouldn't have taken those extra three NEWTS,' Lily was already worried about the ten feet on the difficulties of human transfiguration she had yet to write for McGonagall later that night.

With a sigh, Lily struggled to steady herself back into a standing position, releasing a soft cry when her hand slipped carelessly on the stonewall, earning a small, lateral cut.

'Ouch,' Lily winced as she immediately raised her stinging palm to her eyes for inspection. She had dropped her wand hastily in the process, and it fell with a tiny clatter at her feet, the soft ball of light dying completely from its tip.

'Great Merlin, Lily, get a hold of yourself!' But the growing dark seemed to be sipping what little energy remained in her limbs, seducing her with its absence of things, people—lulling her into the sweet, delicious comfort of sleep.

Lily's lips parted in a contented sigh, her back slipping noiselessly against the wall…

"EVANS! EVANS WAKE UP!"

Lily felt the heat of someone's breath on her face.

She realized she was being shaken violently into consciousness, and she opened her eyes weakly, not entirely surprised to find James Potter stooped over her, his eyes large with worry.

"Lily? Are you alright? Did someone do this to you?"

"No... I'm fine, just a little hungry," Lily managed to choked out, her eyelids falling close, and James placed a supporting arm gingerly beneath the slope of her back, lifting her slender weight against his shoulder.

To his enormous amazement, Lily made no attempt to strike him in the face.

"Quickly then, I have some food in the common room," James offered warmly when Lily rested her head on his shoulder.

Lily murmured something incoherent into his chest, and the tip of her nose gently grazed his neck.

'Bloody hell,' James swallowed, his pulse zooming into overdrive as he steered Lily gently into the direction of the Fat Lady.

Once inside, James settled Lily onto one of the stuffed chairs.

"I'll be right back," he murmured with an easy smile, darting quickly for the stairway that led him directly to the Boys dormitory.

Muttering a quick apology, James pocketed several bars of chocolate from the store under Remus's bed.

When he returned shortly to the common room, he was worried to find Lily's face buried in her arms.

"Here, have some of chocolate," James instructed gently, sitting beside her, tearing a bit of one end of a bar, and handing the piece to Lily, who looked up at him, dazed, lips pale, and forehead matted with films of sweat, and tangled hair.

"Thank you."

Lily chewed a bar in silence, and James was glad that she appeared to be looking much better.

"Er, I'm really sorry for all the trouble," Lily stammered after a while, refusing to look at him out of slight embarrassment, James could tell,

"No trouble at all," James replied, much more shyly than he had anticipated. He was more acquainted with Angry-Lily, he realized.

Lily appeared to notice, and flashed him a beautiful, rare smile.

"James," she began, and James stiffened noticeably.

She had never, in the entire time he had known her, ever called him by his first name before. It felt deliriously wonderful. He felt solid, more substantial, real... as though she had conjured him physically into being.

"About… about last week," Lily continued less awkwardly, clearly oblivious to James's internal hoopla, her hands clasped at her knees as she gazed up at him, eyes twinkling with the small, hopeful promise of friendship,

"You shouldn't be sorry… you had no idea, you couldn't possibly have any idea. I know you were just trying to help."

James was weightless at her words. He had the odd sensation that he was floating. The tips of his fingers felt curiously light, and when Lily kept smiling at him, looking at him kindly with her large, green eyes... James could not imagine being possibly attracted to another girl, wanting to kiss another girl as deeply, as shamelessly, as Douglas had done...

James's stomach churned with the duty of his circumstance. He had to tell Lily. It no longer mattered whether or not she chose to believe him—if he truly cared about her, loved her like he claimed to…

"Lily," James started, his voice thickening in his throat, congealing like cement, "I have to tell you something-"

Lily giggled at the uncharacteristically grim expression on his face.

"Let me take a guess: you want to go out with me? That you love me? Don't worry, I already-"

"It's about Douglas." James cut in, and Lily fell silent.

"What about Douglas?" Lily enquired calmly, and for the first time, James had to force himself to look at her.

"Lily, you deserve to know the truth."

"The truth about what?" Lily was sounding truly worried,

"Douglas-" James took a deep breath.

"He's cheating on you."

Lily appeared frightfully ill again, white as a sheet, her eyes unblinking as she gaped at him in shock, her hands falling loose at her sides.

"How do you know this?"

"After you left History of Magic… Sirius and I-"

At the mention of Sirius's name, Lily's face immediately contorted with fury, and she stood up from the chair, glaring at James with the all the acuteness of a knife, all civility forgotten.

"I understand..." Lily lowered her voice into an icy hiss, "You'll have to forgive my scepticism, Potter, given what I know about Douglas, and what I definitely know about you."

James's mouth fell open in outrage, and he sprang to his feet, his face crumpled in a dark expression split between anger and hurt.

"Exactly, what do you know about me?" James demanded of Lily savagely, and Lily was temporarily silenced by the intensity of his glare. He had never acted unkindly towards her.

"You know," James drawled, his words dipped in sarcasm, "Other than I'm an arrogant, bullying toerag,"

His bitterness now at having been rejected, at having been humiliated, numerously with an endless battery of savage No's, flared up like a sudden, violent ember inside of him.

"You know very little, Lily... little about me, and little about your precious Douglas,"

"Please! What else is there to know about you?" Lily laughed without mirth. "Other than your willingness to lie, to hurt people just so long as your amused! Just so long as you get what you bloody want!"

Something broke inside of James.

He felt insanely cold.

The fire that had been lit by the cruelty of Lily's accusations, was just as easily extinguished by the ugliness of her opinion of him.

He stood quite still, his heart thumping feebly within his chest, his throat feeling as though someone's fingers were wrapped painfully around it, denying him of speech, denying him of air...

In front of him, Lily was taking deep breaths, and despite her firm belief in his untruthfulness, at his decided fraudulence, she began to tremble violently, and she bit at her bottom lip, tears leaking fast from the green eyes he loved so much.

James saw now that she was desperate, she was mad with denial, and he stared quietly at her, dismay rooting him to where he stood... revolted at what he had done, revolted with himself.

Everything had gone so terribly wrong. He had not meant to hurt her, he only wanted help…

"Just stay away from me! Please!" Lily finally implored, and with a muffled sob, she turned away from him, running up the steps to the Girls dormitory.

James heaved a sigh that threatened to split his heart.

"Merlin, Lily... If only I could."