Jily

Chapter 4

James's POV

I started my way back to the common room, perpetually thinking about Lily. I wandered there mindlessly, distracted, my feet leading the way, and before I even realized it I had come to the Fat Lady Portrait.

I muttered the password and clambered in, feeling a whole lot more exhausted than I really should. I heard laughing and joking and everyone having a great time but I didn't listen, just plopped down onto a couch, and buried myself in my thoughts, worrying incessantly about Lily. When my attention drew away from the warmth of the fire again, I found I was alone in the emptiness of midnight. Just when I started to get up to head for bed, I heard somebody climb through the Fat Lady's entrance.

Turning to look at who it was, I froze. We stared at each other for a long moment. Then Lily moved closer to me, never changing her gaze from my eyes.

Lily's POV

When James was chasing me, I had slipped into an empty classroom after I turned a corner, hiding and in desperate need of being alone. I felt like I was suffocating, mourning the loss of a stranger, it seemed.

I sat down, and felt my stomach shoved into my throat, tears returning.

After a long time, I glanced at the clock and realized that curfew was in 15 minutes. I didn't want to, but I would have to head to my room eventually, have to face my fellow Gryffindors with their cheerful faces and easy courage and their entire lack of ridiculous problems relating to James Potter.

Soon enough, I was at the Fat Lady Portrait. I told her the password and walked in, hoping that everyone had gone to bed, wanting to be alone again, to curl in a ball and never resurface.

Almost everyone had gone. All except for the one person that I really wanted to avoid. James. I took a step forward without realizing it. Then another. And another. We were a foot away and I could smell him. He smelled like pumpkins and the quidditch pitch, natural in that irritatingly familiar way of him. I wasn't thinking, I was weighed down by my tear-laden head and the grief of a long, emotionally strenuous day. I wanted to kiss him really badly. I wanted to touch his hair. I wanted to-

All I did was stare into his eyes, before realizing what I was doing, what ridiculous thoughts were going through my mind, and I stopped. I gave him a small kiss on the cheek instead and lingered there for a moment to whisper in his ear just one word.

"Thanks."

And I left. I needed to get some sleep.