"I apologised to her Lily! Even sent her flowers! I don't know what else to do. I may not show it all the time but I do realise the gravity of what I did. I feel horrible!"

"Then maybe stop doing things to warrant that in the first place!"

"I wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Snivellus! You know how he.. "

"For the last time, his name is Severus! And if you were to take your head out of your ass for one f******* minute, you would have realised how dangerous it is for him to be doing what he is doing! Do you have any idea what will happen to him if he were to be found out as a spy?"

"Well he should have thought about that when he decided to join them."

"People make mistakes! God knows how many you did!"

"Oh so we are back to sympathising with him are we? Have you forgotten what he called you?"

"And you called Hermione a Death-eater whore!"

"It isn't…."

"Isn't it? You made a mistake and so did he."

James was silent for a while.

"Lily…"

"Yeah.."

"Do you think you would have given us a chance if he had still been in the picture?"

"What?"

He sighed.

"I'm just wondering, you guys were so close. It was clear he had feelings for you."

"He didn't!"

"He did! Any blind person could see it."

"I didn't, I didn't know, I didn't realise. It's not true, you are mistaken."

"Not on that front Lily."

"You are imagining things. Anyways, I'm ready, we should go."

…

Slughorn was enthusiastic as always and it might even have been enjoyable if James hadn't been too engrossed in his own thoughts.

After staying over for a respectable amount of time, James and Lily excused themselves saying they wanted to walk about the castle for nostalgia sake. It actually was nostalgic as they held hands while walking across the familiar corridors.

They found themselves on the specified seventh floor corridor, only to find an extremely flustered Hermione Granger pacing along the corridor muttering to herself.

Lily looked at him in worry as they approached her slowly.

"Hey Hermione!" Lily called out.

In maybe half a second, Lily had a wand pointed at her neck. The reflexes this girl had! Moody would kill to have her join the Aurors! Why did she have such reflexes, he thought and sobered.

"Oh Oh I'm so sorry! I was distracted and you snuck up on me and I thought for a minute I was back in the batt… ,"she stopped abruptly. "I'm so sorry!" she continued.

Where did she think she was back to? Was she about to say "battle"? What battle?, James wondered.

"No no it's our fault, we shouldn't have startled you like that," Lily lied, it wasn't their fault.

"Eh, Is everything okay?" Lily asked Granger cautiously.

Granger looked into Lily's eyes and had a strange expression on her face before bursting into tears!

"I can't remember what I wrote in my exam! It's like my brain has blocked out the memory! I can't remember half of what I wrote! What if I failed! Oh my God! Oh my God! What will I do? How will I face Albus! How will I face Teddy! I won't get a job! What will I do? How will I manage everything ? Oh God what will I do?" She seemed to panic while the tears in her eyes continued to flow.

The girl who was going to be primarily responsible for bringing down a Dark Lord, the girl who had not broken despite obvious brutal torture, the girl who could give trained Aurors a run for their money in a dual had completely lost it because she wasn't sure how she had done in her NEWTS! He had to try so hard not to laugh.

"Oh dear it's going to be okay. I used to always feel the same after my exams, trust me if you had done badly, you would have known for sure. You are just panicking." Lily tried to console her.

"I can't fail! I cant! I can't afford to! Oh God!" She continued to freak out.

Lily kept reassuring her while he stood by totally amused to see such a normal human emotion from someone who till now had appeared so well put together.

"What's wrong?" He heard Professor McGonagall approach them.

"Granger here thinks she failed her NEWT exams." He chipped in.

McGonagall chuckled. "Well I have just passed a couple of star stuck invigilators who couldn't stop talking about the impressive girl who had just floored them with her skills. So if your practical exams are any indication, I'm sure you wouldn't have failed your NEWTS."

"Oh!" Granger blushed. She looked beautiful, no 'different', she looked 'different', he corrected himself in his mind before he went down a dangerous path.

"Well then, where do we find this elusive room of yours Ms Granger?", McGonagall asked.

"Right here," Granger smiled and was once again hidden behind that alert war ready posture of hers.

She started walking back and forth across the wall seemingly in concentration.

What was happening? The rest of them looked at each other. But before they could ask her if she had lost it, a door appeared on the blank wall and they all gasped!

"Welcome to the Room of Requirement, more precisely, the room of hidden things right now," she announced with a smug smile and looked up at him.

It was probably the first time she had directed such a warm smile towards him. Sadly she quickly realised what she had done and looked away immediately. He still couldn't help but feel that warmth in his chest, he promised himself he would one day make her realise how much he regretted saying and doing what he did and earn her forgiveness.

"Fascinating! Well this is where I'll leave you kids. I'll keep a watch outside and if you aren't out in the next fifteen minutes, I'm coming in." McGonagall said before leaving them to explore the room.

..

The room of hidden things looked more like a junkyard in the muggle Britain or Sirius's closet if he were to find a nearer example. It was full of mismatched items that people had probably dumped there over centuries.

"Found it!" Granger cried out from somewhere within the piles of furniture , balancing precariously over one another.

She was soon joining them in the middle of the room, levitating what looked like a bejewelled tiara with her wand. He could feel darkness seeping out of the fowl thing. It made him very uncomfortable. A look around and he could see Lily appear to be facing the same effects. Granger however had an intense look of concentration and disdain on her face.

She slowly took out a box, a BOX ? out of the beaded bag she was carrying and levitated the tiara into it. Once inside, she dropped the levitation charm and closed the box lid with a relief on her face. Suddenly the darkness was gone.

"What you felt was the darkness of the Horcrux and the protective enchantments which use your worst fears to manipulate you into believing them to be true. The closer you get, the bigger the effects. Trust me you do not want to touch it!" She stated.

"Have you touched one? You mentioned in the first meeting that you destroyed one." Lily asked her.

Granger looked down and seemed as if she had the weight of world on her shoulders. "Yeah I have. Had it around my neck for hours at a stretch for days! Horrible horrible thing I tell you! Ron got so affected that he….. uh, ahm, anyways so yes, yes I have touched it and would prefer to never again." She quickly ended the conversation.

He noticed she had that shield up almost by default all the time and on the rare occasions that she somehow slipped up and started talking more about herself and her experiences, she would realise it soon enough, immediately put it up again and shut down completely.

Initially he had been convinced she was hiding something nefarious but of late he believed she was hiding her entire true self. What was she so scared of? Were her past experiences so bad that she had completely cocooned herself into an impenetrable shell? His eyes went to her covered arm, how much had this girl suffered to be so scared of sharing her true self with them.

Things weren't so bad were they? They were hunting Horcruxes so guess they were!

He promised himself he would try harder to get her to open up and relax, she needed to stop behaving as if she was going to get attacked any second.