It would be mean of me to leave you guys with this. I mean, it's a cliff-hanger, and I'm going on vacation for a week, which means a week of no updates. It would be evil, and cruel, and demented for me to leave such devoted readers with a cliffie for a week, especially one as critical as this. Good thing I'm a mean, evil, cruel person. Otherwise I would feel guilty =)

Disclaimer- If Harry were mine, I would live somewhere magical. As it is, I live in the middle of no where. So obviously, it's not mine.

It was as Harry was studying with Lily for the Charms NEWT that he saw it. It was written in an old Charms book, hidden in the library among other long-lost spells that few students knew. A time-transport spell, similar to the one used on the ministry-issued time turners that he had become so familiar with over his years in the magical world.

Remembering the room in the Department of Mysteries with the numerous time tuners, he began to wonder if that was how the veil had acted, like a large time turner. But if that was the case, how had he been dumped in this specific time, all the way at Hogwarts instead of the Ministry? And where was the Sirius from his time, who had fallen into the veil as well? Was he wandering about in this time, hiding because he knew he couldn't let his past self see his present self? Or had he been catapulted into a different time or place when he'd fallen through the veil?

But Harry knew somehow in his heart of hearts, and had known since he had realized where he was and what time he was in at the beginning of this adventure, that Sirius wouldn't be recovered during the course of this trip. It had been his time to go when he had fallen through the veil, regardless of if Harry thought his time had been too early, and since his talk with the Sirius of this time period, Harry had come to terms with his godfather's death. Sirius, of all people, would know what Sirius would want Harry to do if he were to die. It seemed that his words previously had cleared Harry's conscience.

"What's wrong?" Lily asked him quietly, her eyebrows drawn together in concern.

Harry attempted to smile at her, but she could tell that her friend's heart wasn't really in it. "Nothing," he told her, trying to seem calm. Lily saw him mark the page he had been staring at carefully in the book and resume his flipping through the pages, but she didn't say anything about it. Remus's secret, she had figured out on her own, and she had thought it best to get it out in the open between them that she was his friend and not upset with him about it. Harry's secret she hadn't figured out and wasn't so sure about, so if he didn't want to talk about the oddness he sometimes seemed to exclude, she wasn't about to argue with him.

Besides, she needed Harry to act as a buffer for another type of oddness and awkward conversation she was trying to avoid with a different boy. Ever since James Potter had asked her on that date for Valentines Day a couple weeks before, she had found her eyes drawn to him, her breath a little short when he talked to her. Lily knew that a lot of girls were impacted—or rather, infected—by him this way. He seemed to radiate charm to most girls, and many of those who lived in her dorm room had been under James Potter's spell.

She also knew that she had promised herself, years before, that she would never be one of those girls. She had been so proud of the fact that he hadn't bespelled her with his childish pranks and boy-next-door looks that she hadn't ever considered the possibility that one day she might regret that promise to herself.

Of course, by avoiding the problem at hand by hiding with Harry in the library, the one place James rarely set foot in the castle, she was also subjecting herself to Harry's tender mercies. And for some odd, unknown, unexplainable reason, Harry seemed even more determined than James to see the two of them together.

"So… the next Hogsmeade weekend is coming up soon," Harry said in an attempt at casualness. "Still planning on going with James?" Anyone else would've thought that Harry was asking her out. Lily knew better. Harry was pinning her effectively in a corner so that she wouldn't hurt his other friend.

"I don't know," she answered, honestly as confused as she knew she sounded. "He sort of said something about it before, when I couldn't go with him to the last Hogsmeade weekend, but now he barely talks to me. He hasn't brought it up, and I don't want to be the one to do so, because then he'll re-grow his ego and think that I'm desperate to go on a date with him."

Harry frowned, thinking back on how his future father had been behaving around Lily for the last few days as well. It was true that he had been doing his best to avoid being alone in a room with her, but Harry was pretty sure it was just the nerves of having to ask Lily Evans out once again, only to be rejected.

Never one for talks about feelings, and slightly afraid that James would be angry with him if he found out that Harry had talked to Lily about this, Harry approached the subject delicately. "I think… I think he's just a little shy," he tried, wincing as he saw the look on Lily's face.

Lily scrunched her nose, remembering all the stunts that James Potter had pulled in previous years to ask her out on a date. "Trust me, James Potter is a lot of things, but 'shy' isn't one of them."

Lily saw Harry pause and steady himself, and then listened as he bravely continued. "Well, I mean, maybe he's changed."

"He's not shy around other girls," Lily said archly, remembering stories that her dorm mates had told her of his exploits with the females of Hogwarts.

"Maybe he's just shy around you?" Harry tried, shrugging his shoulders. "I mean, you can be a little intimidating. I know that's how you have to be sometimes, being Head Girl and all, but it probably makes James really nervous. He was beating himself up for days after he hesitated too long to ask you to the last Hogsmeade weekend." Harry told her, while wondering if he shouldn't have said it.

But Lily blushed, and that made Harry think that maybe those were the words she needed to hear. "Well, he better make sure he doesn't wait that long again then," she said, trying to sound confident, but failing even to herself.

James was thinking something along the same lines. He had been trying to gain nerves of steel, as was necessary to approach the girl of his dreams and once more ask her out on a date, but he just couldn't seem to buck up enough to do the job again.

"Pathetic, that's what it is." Sirius told him, eying his best friend's slouched-over form critically. "It's a date. To Hogsmeade. It's not even on Valentines weekend, like the last one was. And she already sort of said she would go, didn't she?"

"Well, kind of," James agreed, looking down at his clasped hands. "I just haven't had the right time to talk to her about it yet, really."

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to talk to her about it tonight, won't you?" Sirius said smugly, a smirk forming on his features. "It's just the two of you on patrol, and a big empty castle. Perfect time."

And this was what James was thinking as he and Lily silently made their rounds, gliding through the quiet castle all alone. About how it was the perfect time to talk to her about maybe becoming more than friends, about how he really just wanted one chance to show her that he had changed for the better, about how he had been able to think of nothing but her since that day he'd asked her out.

But when he finally got her name out and she turned to stop in the corridor, the words were totally lost. "Lily…" He finally said again, turning to stare at her as she bit her lip.

"Yes?" He couldn't think of what he'd been about to say. All he could see was that lower lip that she kept taking in-between her teeth, wishing she weren't so mean to her lip.

Wishing he could kiss the poor, chewed-on, poofy red lip better.

And then, James did what he was so good at doing when he was around Lily Evans, and acted without thinking first, and leaned over and did just that.

It was heaven. It was nirvana. It lasted all of three seconds, and then his cheek was stinging where Lily had smacked him and the love of his life was gone.