Author Note: Please review! Once again this is a shorter chapter, but there is a big step in the James/Lily department. It may not be exactly what you want...
That night Lily went to the bathroom at midnight. As she made her way back she couldn't help but notice the light from underneath James' door. She took it as a sign and made her way down the hall. Knocking softly she opened the door slowly. "I come in peace," she whispered.
James was frowned in her direction as he set aside the magazine he was previously reading. "I don't have energy to fight with you. Besides my parents are down the hall and sleeping."
"What if I said I didn't want to fight, just apologize?" she asked.
"I would say take a seat." He gestured to the empty second bed.
"Today I never should have snuck out with Michael, but I just wanted to get out of my head for a little bit...I just wanted to pretend I was in the muggle world...When I saw you I just got so angry and overreacted…" Lily looked at him trying to read his expression. "You are a great guy and an amazing friend, I'm sorry."
"Well, I'm sorry too. Not about staging an elaborate ruse and coming to bring you home, but about making that scene at the restaurant. My mum can never know about that, she wants me to blend in as well as possible when I'm around muggles, especially now." James rubbed his hands on his knees looking over Lily. "Why did you ask me to take Michael and let you get in trouble?"
"I don't know…" She shrugged. "Lately, I don't even know who I am. Everyone expects me be this 'Straight O Gryffindor Prefect' dating the Quidditch captain…"
James quirked an eyebrow at that.
"Michaels words," she explained, "but lately I feel sort of lost. Even though people expect me to be that girl everything is changing around me and I feel weird staying the same." Her shoulders slumped. "When I saw you here the first you came back even though I was annoyed, I didn't realize how grateful I was that you were here because it meant that not everything was different." She ran her hand through her hair holding it up before letting it fall around her face. "But then you started acting different and I don't need another person who asks me how I'm doing or talking with me about my parents-"
"You don't mind when Remus does it or Sirius," James said.
"Remus has always been like that and Sirius got me drunk."
"I know where my dad hides his stash of cheap firewhiskey," James offered.
"No." She shook her head chuckling. "How about you just act like James again?"
"How do I do that? I act like a nice guy and you bite me."
"That day I actually bit you, I appreciate it. If someone else came to talk to me I would have just started bawling, I wouldn't have gotten out all my anger."
"You're welcome."
"You know what I mean and I need that James. I need the boy who steals my charms books before the tests and turns my ink invisible until I promise to kiss him. As much as I yell at him, he makes me laugh even when I forget how."
"You like me?" he asked, eyes suddenly hopeful. "Even the old me? Because I don't like all this soppy stuff." He twisted his body around as he seemed to forget her earlier transgressions.
"The soppy stuff is nice sometimes, and I don't like all of the old you, the mean parts," she said.
"Can you forget that?" James muttered referring to the incident with Severus. " I apologized, alright?"
"I know, and I've forgiven you. I want you to forgive me too." She smiled at him. "Because I think that you must be pretty great if you can deal with my at my best and my worst."
"There's a but, isn't there?" James asked, features suddenly hardening.
"I can't promise you anything yet and I know you've waited a long time, but it wouldn't be fair to either of us right now."
"Lily…"
"I don't expect you to wait forever, but if there's ever going to be an us I need to to figure out who I am first. Does that make sense?" Lily didn't wait to answer. "I don't even know if-"
"I've waited four years, I can wait a bit longer." He got to his feet, preparing to cross the short distance when the bathroom door opened and Sirius emerged. "Padfoot, do you mind?"
"Well, I can't sleep either, how about we move this discussion to the kitchen?" Sirius asked. "I fancy a bit of tea."
"It's midnight, besides you can't make tea, and you know what mum will do to you if you wake up Mopsy to do it," James said, clearly irritated at his best friend interrupting.
"I could make it," Lily offered, looking from James to Sirius trying to figure out what was going on.
"There is a pitcher of pumpkin juice," Sirius suggested. "I quite like pumpkin juice, so refreshing."
"I'm not thirsty," James told him.
"Of course you are." Sirius rushed forward to grab his friend's arm. Lily placed her hands on either side of her leg as she motioned to get up. "No, no, just give us a minute."
"I'll be back, we can finish talking," James said as Sirius pulled him out of the room. By some small miracle his parent's hadn't awoken. Which to him was very odd. His father may have stopped being an auror eight years ago, his training still clung to him. James could recall being very young and his father rushing into his room because he heard a sound. It turned out to be a loose tree branch scraping against the window. "Are you going to tell me what this is about?"
"After that whole scene with her you're just going to take that?" Sirius asked.
"How much did you hear?" James questioned.
"Enough," Sirius said as he walked over the cabinet for glasses. "Where you joking about not being thirsty because I'm having pumpkin juice."
"Pour me a glass," James said as he leaned against the counter. "And if you heard enough you would have heard her apologize. It's exactly what I want, Padfoot."
"Really? To wait another year or two for a girl that might not even be as great as you think?"
"Sirius…"
"I've heard you go on and on about Lily for years, you act like she can do no wrong...how can anyone live up to that?" Sirius questioned.
James shook his head, staring as his best friend set a glass of juice in front of him. "She already has," he said.
"Open your eyes, mate." Sirius rolled his taking a swig of the juice, frowning as he swallowed obviously hoping for something a bit more potent. "If you want to sit on your arse waiting for a her, by all means do it, but I'm not going to listen to you complain anymore. I'm not going to pull you out of a room when you're making a scene because of her." Sirius looked at his glass and scowled after taking another drink. "Godric, that's awful."
James rolled his eyes. "Are you done?" he questioned, not waiting for an answer. He forgot that he promised Lily a glass of pumpkin juice, but that was irrelevant when he came back upstairs to see her curled on the additional bed. With a smirk he pulled his red and gold blanket from the chest in front of his bed before throwing it across the petite girl before sliding into his own bed.
The next morning Agatha Potter woke aside her husband a smile playing across her face. "I've missed you," she said.
"Trust me, you're a lot better than the quarters in Bulgaria. It was like being on assignment all over again."
"I'm sure Mopsy got up nice and early to make you your favorite, she loves you."
"I hope she's not the only one." He kissed the side of her head before tossing the covers aside and locating his robe and slippers. Agatha did the same thing simultaneously and led him out of the room.
"Did you hear Lily get up? Her door's open and the rooms empty."
"I thought I heard voices last night, but I didn't get up." Charles walked past his wife, eyes scanning the hallway until he stopped in front of his son's room. "Looks like Lily and James made up." He eyed the newest member of the household curled up on the extra bed, a blanket haphazardly strewn across her tiny body.
"Don't we have rules? You better talk to your son."
"The door is open and they're in separate beds, I doubt we're going to be grandparents anytime soon." Charles just smirked and laughed at his wife's shocked face. "Listen, if it was Sirius I would already be marching in, but James isn't that stupid or at least I hope he isn't."
"Charles…"
"I want tea, come on." He slipped an arm around his wife and gently pulled her down the hallway into the kitchen. As soon as they walked in plates appeared on the table and their house elf appeared with a pot of tea, casting a quick spell to pour it into the cups waiting on the table. "I take it was an interesting time while I was gone."
"Nothing, I couldn't handle." Agatha shrugged.
"Do you really want me to talk with James? Because I need to talk to Lily as well."
"Why?" Agatha gave him a perplexed look as she started on her breakfast.
"Didn't you see the note James grabbed off the table by the front door? That burnt dinner was the classic diversion, besides Sirius would never turn down his favorite restaurant unless he knew his parents were going to be there." Charles added milk to his tea and stirred it up. "I just can't figure out why Lily left."
"For someone so smart, you don't pick up on things." Agatha laughed as she reached for the milk to pour in her tea as well, but stirred half a teaspoon of sugar, the tea made extra strong to Charles' preference. "James and Sirius weren't speaking with her, I bet you anything she took a trip to the nearby muggle village with Michael. With Heather he knew how to act, not like James." She rolled her eyes at her son and his refusal to integrate with the non-magical world.
"I wish she wouldn't have went, she's not in trouble, but we talked about the heightened security. In order to protect the mixed families, muggle borns and muggles we're trying to reduce overall contact between the two worlds, that way we can track who's going where and hopefully catch some of the Death Eaters." He looked down at his tea, taking a drink. "Enough about my work, let's talk about something else."
"Like what?" Agatha said reaching for a piece of buttered toast.
"Anything to get me to stop thinking about the war."
Agatha just swallowed harshly, the word was not attached to any others. That meant the prediction they feared the most was coming true: the Dark Lord had waged war on both the magical and non-magical world.