Chapter 5

Lily's POV

"Alice!" I shouted from the dorm.

Alice came out of the bathroom brushing her teeth and her hair wet from her shower.

"Yeah?" she said, slightly muffled by the toothpaste in her mouth.

"Have you seen my diary?" I asked, checking under the beds.

"You had it on the train." Alice told me, like I didn't already know that. I had dropped it in the compartment before the boys came in and we shoved it back into my bag.

"Yeah, but where is it now?" I was panicking. If somebody found that diary I was screwed. I had written so much about James and the Marauders, and Alice when I was in fights with her. So much about my sister, the teachers, my hormones!

"Have you looked in the Common Room?" Alice said, walking back into the bathroom to rinse her mouth.

"No, I'll go check." I hurried downstairs as fast as I could with my foot still healing.

I looked around at the kids in the Common Room. Nobody seemed to be reading it. So far, so good.

I ran to check under the couch by the fireplace where James and I had sat just days before. No luck.

"Lily!" I heard. I turned. It was James.

And he was holding my diary.

"James!" I shouted, running over to him. "You stole my diary!"

"No!" James said, taken aback.

"Well, where'd you get it?"

"The train!"

"Oh." I said. "It must have fallen out of my back again."

"It's fine." he said. "It happens to everyone."

"You didn't read it did you?" I asked, worried.

"No," he said casually, handing the book to me and putting his hands in his pockets. "I didn't read it, but you do have lovely handwriting."

"So you read it?" I asked, getting angry again.

"No, Lily, I didn't. But, I did have to open it to see who's it was. I'd recognize your handwriting anywhere, love." he said, taking my hand.

"Well, thanks." I said.

"Lily," James took my other hand, which still had the diary in it, and started swinging our hands back and forth. His skin was soft and warm. He looked at me.

"You're beautiful, Lily."

I smiled.

"Do you want to go sit down?" I asked, sliding my hand off his cheek.

"Yeah." he said.

We sat down where we had earlier that week; in front of the fire. It was a two seat couch, but you could fit three comfortably. Instead of sitting by the other arm of the couch, I sat right next to James. He put his arm around me and I leaned my head on his shoulder.

"How's your foot?" he asked.

"It doesn't hurt as much anymore. The ice helped with the pain that night though, but I have to walk on crutches outside because of the slopes; she doesn't want me to slip."

"Do you like me?" James asked.

Well.

That was abrupt.

"Why?" I asked, lifting my head off his shoulder and looking at him.

"Ok, Lily." he said, turning in his seat. "I didn't read your diary. But, Sirius did."

I opened my mouth to shout at him, but he cut me off.

"Sirius read it." he said. "I tried to get him to stop, I really did! I even tackled him! He kept reading though, and really Lily, I did, I begged him not to, because I didn't want to hear any of it, and I wanted you to trust me. So, then he started reading stuff out loud, but he only read stuff from 4th and 5th years, nothing from 6th, I promise,-"

I groaned, leaning my head against the back of the couch, shutting my eyes tight. This was NOT happening. And boy, was he talking fast!

"-and he read me stuff he thought I'd want to hear, because frankly, Lily, I've been a wreck this past week! It's so hard to be around you when you always look pretty and I'm not with you, and then we kissed and you still said no! I've kissed a lot of girls, and not one of them has ever kissed me like you did! So, even though I didn't want to hear it, I did. It was all stuff like, 'James is so great and handsome, but I don't like him'. They all ended like that! "But I don't like him!" You say things that I say about you and I DO like yo-!"

"James!" I shouted lifting my head off the couch.

Good, he'd stopped talking.

"Yeah?" he asked nervously.

I'm going to punch a wall, I thought.

"Ok, listen." I said calmly, sitting in the same seat, right next to him, but turned in my seat towards him. I put my hands on his knee. "I'm not mad. It seems like something you and Sirius would both do, except you didn't do it. That shows me that you've matured a lot, and I'm ready to take this relationship to the next level."

"Really?" he grinned.

"Yes." I said, trying not to giggle too much at his cheeky grin.

"So, what's that mean?" he asked excitedly.

"It means that you may write your own diary, pour your heart and all of your secret thoughts into it, and I get to read it."

His grin left his face.

He sighed. "Not cool, Evans."

"Sorry, kid, you deserved it." I said patting his leg and standing up.

"You know what, Evans?" he said, handing me my diary off the couch.

"What?" I asked.

"That was pretty funny." he said smiling.

As I walked back to my dorm, I couldn't help but smile to think that he really had matured.