The portrait hole closed with a finality that seemed to echo around my head. I blinked several times, my jaw flickering minutely from left to right, right to left.

I tried to breathe.

I tried to think.

But I couldn't quite manage either.

'I take it she's not happy with you, then?' The Fat Lady pondered amusedly down to me but I made no attempt to answer her questions.

I stumbled blindly along the seventh floor corridor with sweat catching at the strands of my hair at my temple and my hands tingling in an icy sort of way. My mind had become too sluggish to catch up on what had just happened unlike my body. It felt like I was fighting for my life, my heart was thundering, my whole body quaked and no thought could properly form in my mind. It was something about Lily, Lily being angry and something about the Dark Arts and – and the Dark Lord.

'…You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"

Her voice echoed strangely as it replayed in my head as my feet pounded the carpeted halls; I could feel the eyes of most of the portraits that I past stare at me curiously. Darkness had already settled in around the castle and I found it stifling with the heat, so much so that I gripped a hand to my stomach and without conscious thought made straight for the nearest bathroom.

I threw open the wooden door of a random cubicle, slammed it shut and collapsed in a shivery huddle on the tiles of the floor as I wretched all of the dinner that I had eaten who knows when ago into the toilet.

Once I had finished, I sank against the door and without warning tears began to scald my eyes and I buried my face into my robed knees.

'…I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine...'

This couldn't be the end. I had to still see her, be able to talk to her and laugh with her. I needed her when school had finished for the summer, I had no one else to make home bearable. I needed her in my life; she was my closest and oldest friend, the person who knew me better than anyone else I could think of … she was the girl I was in love with.

I gripped my hair painfully tight to try and drown the pain that was making it difficult to take breaths with, so much so that strands started to part company with my scalp.

I couldn't see any way out of this misery. I knew Lily, I knew she never went back on her word, but surely I could make her change her mind, make her see sense?

I sunk to the cold tiles on the floor in a sprawled heap not even caring about how late it was and that I needed to get back to the Slytherin Common room.

But even as I thought of waiting outside the Great Hall for Lily in the morning, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I understood the futility of everything beyond this day that I would have to endure.

As the weeks and months and years went by, my eyes we're almost attracted to her in a magnetic sort of way and saw everything being played out like a nightmare I would never wake up from.

I watched him pour her a cup of coffee at breakfast. I saw her lips move into words of thanks with a cautious smile.

I saw her laughing at a joke he had told her. The sound was guttural and loud. Her head was thrown backwards and her hands pressed to cup her hipbones as they walked together down a teeming corridor after lessons on a Friday afternoon. Their Heads badges gleamed in the October sunshine which caught sparkling strands of her hair and the white of his teeth.

I saw her barely inches away from him down on the pitch: her arms were crossed against the cold as she beamingly congratulated him on a victorious win at Quidditch against Slytherin.

A passing walk by a window allowed me a view of them holding hands while taking a stroll around the grounds.

He kissed her cheek on a spring morning in the courtyard leaving it blushing red.

Graduation. A kiss. A tear. A laugh. A sigh.

Whispered words from fellow Death Eaters, less than a year later, James Potter and Lily Evans are to be married.

My heart bleated a strange rhythm, pumping its sluggish blood through enough and around to get by.

Heart to stone. Stone to heart.

Laughter tastes bitter, sugar tastes sour.

My love for you strengthens hour upon hour...