Disclaimer: If you know a method by which Harry Potter might pass in to my possession, please let me know.

(A/N: Upside to being deathly ill: having the astounding amout of free time neccessary to bang out two chapters in one day. And now you all get the chance to see how unutterably awful I am at writing endings! I present to you the final, half-assed chapter in which nothing very much happens. Did you expect any less?

If you really did read this long...I am so very very sorry.

Oh, one more thing. Due the ceaseless mockery of one of my friends, I would like to point out that Sirius and Remus are NOT having a 'moment' in this chapter. They are having a conversation. Some people just read too much dojinshi...

Wait, I forgot to say that if you haven't read DH (and you haven't read that but you ARE reading this, there is something very wrong with you) this will completely and utterly ruin a major plot point. But if you've left your house since July, you know about it already.)

Chapter 7: Time After Time

"Moony, you're giving me a headache," Sirius said dully.

"But it's completely brilliant! I'd never have figured it out, Dumbledore's really—"

"You sound like Peter."

"Aren't you the least bit interested—?"

"No."

"But—"

"Remus, I do not want to think about this ever again. We are going to be expelled."

Remus stared very pointedly at the ground. "That was very…noble of you, by the way. Even if he wasn't actually dead."

Sirius looked at the ceiling. "Not that noble. More like…sensible. It's better if only one of us if gets in trouble. And no one would mind if I didn't come home for a few years. You and James and Peter…you're really all I have." He glanced uncomfortably at Remus. "Visit me in prison?"

Remus hit him in the head, but he smiled as he did it. "You're an idiot. And you're not going to prison." He paused as though he had just noticed something very important. "Er…where's James?"

OoOoOo

"I really am sorry," James said. "I'm saying it now because we both know damn well I'll never say it when you're conscious." He put his hand down on one of hospital wing tables and leaned over, holding his head with his free hand in a vague attempt to nurse the dull pain throbbing behind his eyes. "I don't like you. I'll never like you. But I didn't want you dead. I don't like hurting people. So, for what it's worth…well." He laughed.

"YOU!"

The shout nearly gave James a heart attack. When he turned around, he nearly had another one. "Evans?"

James froze. Lily's normally bright eyes had gone suddenly watery. Her wand was at James's throat. "What did you do to him? I—I'll—"

"Miss Evans, if you wish to murder Mr. Potter, you will do it outside of my infirmary!"

Lily lowered her wand, but very slowly. "I'm here to see Severus Snape, Madam Pomfrey."

Madam Pomfrey gestured angrily at Snape's bed, giving them both a look of utmost disapproval before leaving again.

"He's not dead, you know," James said when she had gone. "He's only unconscious."

Lily blushed a little. "That's all right, then," she said. "I don't really want him to know I was here."

"Me neither."

Tears tracked steadily down her cheeks; James fought back an urge to brush them away. "I don't want him thinking I've forgiven him. I haven't."

"Well," James said awkwardly, "he did call you—"

"Don't you think I know what he called me?" She was crying in earnest now, great streaming tears that made James want to hit something very hard. "I remember it every day. It's not the sort of thing you forget." She bent low over the bed and James looked pointedly away as she kissed Snape's cheek. "But you were always my best friend, Sev. I haven't forgotten that either."

A sick jealousy roared in the pit of James's stomach. "I—I'll see you later, Evans."

Lily stood. "No, I think I'll let you walk me back to the common room, Potter."

"What?"

Lily cocked an eyebrow. "Don't you fancy me anymore?"

"That's not funny, Evans," James said with a scowl. "And you're still crying."

Lily shrugged. "Suit yourself."

James leaned back against the door as it closed after her.

For about eight seconds.

"Evans!"

Lily turned around so slowly James wasn't sure she was even going to stop. "Yes?"

"Er…" James hadn't actually planned on her doing anything other than telling him to bugger off. "Evans—Lily—I think—I've been wanting to tell you for a long time—"

"That you're incapable of putting sentences together?"

James laughed nervously. "No…I wanted to tell you that I really do fancy you. And I know you think I'm a complete git and you've been turning me down as long as I can remember but—but would it matter if I told you that all the showing off and mussing up my hair and saying all those stupid things and everything—that maybe all that is because you were the one I was trying to impress?"

Lily just looked at him.

"And—and maybe it's all because I'm a bit in love with you, Lily."

She was silent for a long time. Too long.

"Right. Nevermind. Sorry. I'll just—"

"I don't think I'd mind if you asked me out again. Not now. But maybe…" She paused, looking thoughtful. "Ask me again when you've grown up a bit." And then, as she stated to walk away, "I think you're nearly there, James."

One the one hand, she still hadn't said she'd go out with him. On the other, well…she had called him James.

He walked away with what could only be described as a spring in his step.

OoOoOo

"Will you stop with that bloody look, Prongs?"

"What look?"

"The pathetic glazed one you've got on. We're about as sick of hearing about Evans as we are about Dumbledore."

"How did he know? How does he always know?"

"He's just a weird bloke, I think."

Remus frowned. "Shut up, Padfoot. And you should be glad he let us off."

Sirius merely yawned and rolled his eyes. "Yes, I know, you've told me a hundred thousand times by now. I thanked him, didn't I?"

"Actually, what you said was, 'bloody hell, that was a close one'."

"Knew it was something like that."

"Have I mentioned recently that you are a complete git?"

"Twice this morning."

James wasn't listening. He was unlikely ever to listen again.

Sirius cast a despairing look at James before turning back to Remus. "That's it. No girls for me. Ever. I'm going to have…a motorbike."

Remus sighed. "Don't you think you've got other things to worry about?"

"Not on the last day of term I don't. And shut up. You're ruining the lovely weather."

Remus went back to his unhappy study of his exam results as Sirius fell back on the lakeside grass to take his third nap of the day. "How do you two keep beating me Astronomy when I've got to make those stupid charts just to stop myself mauling people?"

James shrugged. "That's what you get for applying yourself, Moony."

"Just wait, next year's going to be mad," Remus said sullenly. "I hear N.E.W.T.s are ten times as bad as O.W.L.s. It'll be awful."

"You were fine in O.W.L.s," said Sirius. "It's only people like Wormtail that've got something to—oh, come on, I was only—if you start crying, I'll never speak to you again, Peter." Remus turned to James in an effort to keep from laughing.

"I don't know," he said, half to himself. "It's only one more year here, isn't it? A year, and then…" He gestured grandly, seeming to indicate the world at large. "It's sort of…scary."

James looked out to where Remus had pointed. It was a direction in which he had often looked without ever paying any real attention. The sky rolled out endlessly toward the horizon, cascading over the mountains that framed the skyline and duplicated on the surface of the lake beneath it, in which he could just make out the shady figure of the giant squid Lily Evans had once sworn she'd rather go out with than him.

He thought of the beautiful bright green eyes of the girl with whom he had fallen so suddenly and profoundly in love.

He thought of the scrawny, sallow boy he'd tortured relentlessly since the moment they'd laid eyes on each other, and he thought that maybe he hadn't deseved it every time, and that maybe his hatred of Snape had eased just the tiniest bit and was now merely exceptionally intense dislike.

He thought of what Lily had said to him the last time he'd seen her… "Ask me again when you've grown up a bit."

He thought that next year, she would see that he had. That next year, her answer would be yes.

Remus had started to think that he'd fallen asleep.

"I think you're worried over nothing, mate," James said just as Remus had been about to begin prodding him awake. "I think next year's going to be brilliant."

(a further A/N: I know not of these "plot holes" of which you speak. Possibly because my ability to write proper endings fell down one some time ago. Failure to complain/encourage me in the form of scornful/joyously praise-filled reveiws will only lead to my becoming even more lazy in the future. Assuming that is actually possible.)

(a further, further A/N: After much reflection and sifting through my mother's CDs, I have changed the title of this chapter. It seemed to make some sort of sense at the time.)