In Hogwarts there is gossip. It's a fact and everyone knows it. There's not a single soul that doesn't do it, I swear I even saw Dumbledore whispering something to McGonagall. That's just how drastic it is. The more popular you are, the more the gossip follows you, except if your name is Leslie Trench, in which case the gossip follows you anyway. The point being that I sit atop the popular crowd. It's not a point of vanity; it's just the way things worked out. And seeing as I have all eyes on me, I hear many things whispered behind my back, though I'm almost positive that Sirius makes up half of them... A different point perhaps.

But what happens between me and Lily Evans isn't even gossip anymore. It's been going on too long; it would be rather tiring to keep whispering about it. People just accepted the way things were. The girls seemed to accept that I was in love with Lily, though that didn't stop them from flirting madly with me, and they also accepted that Lily hated me, which was probably why they continued doing it.

Love. It was an interesting word. I hadn't thought much of it. When I was fourteen I'd applied it to the obsession I had with Penny Adamson. When I was fifteen I'd applied it to the constant game Lily and I had played. When I was sixteen I'd applied it to infatuation I'd had with her. And now at the ripe age of seventeen I thought slightly more carefully before I said the word. It was the right word I was almost positive. It was the butterflies in my stomach as I watched her. It was how I noticed everything about her until I knew her better than I knew myself. It was the heavy blow in my stomach as she pushed by me as if she didn't know I existed. It was the fluttering in my heart when she spoke even a simple word to me. Yes, I was sure it was love. And I felt robbed of it.

I wished that I had never fallen in love with Lily Evans. Because every glare, every harsh word, every time she ignored me, it cut like a sword through my heart again and again until I felt as if I would explode or break down crying. And yet I still loved her, I simply couldn't help myself. It was the way she smiled at the little Hufflepuff first year that absolutely adored her. It was the way she focused so hard on her school work, how she studied in the library or in the common room when everyone had gone off to bed. It wasn't the game of play and catch she always insisted it was. For I would have loved to be with her without all the fuss. For me it would be like a weight lifted from my shoulders, a medicine that would cure the ache in my heart.

I shook my head short hair sticking up crazily and then flopping back against my forehead, I moved it backwards with my hand almost on instinct. I rubbed my eyes knocking my glasses off the bridge of my nose. They fell to the floor and shattered. I groaned picking them up and muttering a quick reparo. The glass melded together forming a clear easy surface. I slipped them back over my eyes without incident and rose from beside the fire.

I grabbed my bag from the floor slinging it casually onto my shoulder. I exited the common room surprised to find it empty, all the others having gone down to breakfast. The portrait swung closed behind me as I stepped out wrapping my cloak around me to keep out the chill of late October. I hurried down the Great Hall jogging down the stairs which seemed to try to move as slowly as possible. I entered the Great Hall in fifteen minutes, which was ten minutes longer than I'd wanted it to be. I sat down next to Sirius who looked decidedly moody, which was never a good thing. Remus looked worried as well and I gave him a questioning look. He shrugged and returned to his eggs and book. I began to pile some potatoes and sausage on to my plate. Eating quickly as I was late to breakfast. I was done in record time and quickly wiped my mouth on my napkin and turned to face Remus who had finished as well.

"Are you excited about class?" I asked him.

He looked up from his book, which he'd propped against his glass of pumpkin juice.

"Are you?" he asked sounding decidedly uninteresting, which alerted me to the fact that this was Moony we were talking about so I turned to my left and caught sight of the girl beside me. Or to be more accurate she caught sight of me.

"James," she cooed, flipping her hair over her shoulder.

The only reason I didn't turn away was that I caught sight of her hair. And it was a fabulous shade of dark fiery red, so like Lily's it was shocking. And I could stare at it all day long. I resisted the urge to reach out and touch it.

"Rose," I said.

Rose happened to be my only friend that was a girl, and the only one that had ever been my girlfriend. She understood that I loved Lily and I understood that she loved me. She took my hand in her own and stroked it gently. Remus gave me a look from over the top of his book and I shrugged. He returned to his reading though I could see that he was sneaking glances at me from the top of his book. Sirius didn't turn around to flirt with Rose, which alerted me that something was wrong, but at that moment Rose started to speak.

"Did you hear about the attack?" she asked gently.

I turned towards her, and I was afraid as I looked into her clear blue eyes. They looked straight through me and I wondered not for the first time why I couldn't just date Rose. She was everything that a guy could want. Talented and beautiful, smart and gentle. Rose was a gem and I was glad to call her a friend. But she just wasn't Lily, and I hated how that hurt her.

"Who was hurt?"

"Killed," she said gently, "It was the Pendersons."

I gasped. The Pendersons were a well respected family, there was a Gryffindor girl in our year that I had grown up with that was named Maria Penderson. We had been best friends until I went to Hogwarts. Her parents had pulled her out of school because of You-Know-Who's rise to power.

"Maria as well," I asked.

She nodded gravely and as I looked at her closely I could see dark circles under her eyes and her eyes looked slightly bloodshot. But here she was worried about me.

"Oh, James," she said softly, "I just can't believe she's dead."

I could never remember Rose being good friends with Maria but they'd shared a dorm for seven years and that's more than most could say.

"Let's go for a walk," I said pulling her up from the table.

Remus watched us cautiously, his eyes sticking up from his book, like he was watching a soap opera. I resisted the urge to stick out my tongue at him, however it seemed inappropriate in the current situation.

"But class," she protested.

"We can spare fifteen minutes," I said simply and she didn't protest.

I lead her outside, into the crisp air and we started to walk. She grabbed my hand and I held it more for her benefit then mine. It took her a minute to speak.

"I just can't believe, Maria's dead," Rose said, "It brings the war closer to you when it's someone you know."

"Yes," I said softly, "War seems to do that."

"Oh, James," she cried flinging her arms around me and crying hard, I patted onto her back as she sobbed. When she finished crying she wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sniffled, looking kind of pathetic.

"Thanks," she said weakly kissing me lightly on the lips.

It was weird how I was used to the way we were. If there wasn't any gossip about me and Lily then there was so much about me and Rose. That she had seduced me, that she fed me love potions and that I was her obedient love slave. Of course all of this just bounced off Rose as she held her head high and waded through it all. Another reason that I loved Rose.

Sometimes I just wanted to scream and curse and then murder Lily Evans because she had made me fall in love with her against my will. And because I loved her, I couldn't love Rose the way I so desperately wanted to.

Rose placed my arm around her and leaned into me partly because of the cold and partly because she wanted to be near to me. We were silent and I gently guided her back inside to the warmth of the giant castle that we called home. As we entered the castle I shrugged my arm out from around her shoulders and she sighed lightly.

"Thank you, James," she said, "that helped."

And with that she skipped off, winding her way around the castle as well as a Marauder. I headed quickly off to Defense using a different route so I wouldn't have to run into her. I would've given anything to love her the way that I loved Lily. For my life to end in the happily ever after that both of us wanted. I told her this once and she'd laughed.

"Oh, sweetheart," she'd said, "it's not your fault. You were meant to love Lily, not me. Perhaps it is my fault for falling in love with you. There are times of course that I wish for your love so greatly, as great as you wish for hers, perhaps stronger. But the wills of a silly little girl has nothing to do with anything in the great thing that it fate. Oh, how I love you James."

She'd giggled and ran her hand against my jaw line.

"But you are not mine and you never will be."

She'd turned away then, leaving me with an unpleasant feeling in my stomach.

I arrived outside the Defense classroom and shook my head as I entered the first one there. I pulled out my homework, spreading it out in front of me. The parchment was half completed and filled with creased lines, rips, tears, and smudges of food. I crumpled up the paper and threw it into my bag, struggling around in my bag for a spare piece of parchment. I pulled out a clean sheet and spread it out on the desk, dating it and titling it before beginning. I wrote quickly only stopping to quickly to refill my quill. The more I wrote the more interested I became. I finished off the parchment with a quick flip of my quill, blowing on the ink careful not to smudge it.

Remus took the seat next to me, the one usually occupied by Sirius and I turned to face him.

"Where's Sirius?" I asked him.

"I was about to ask-"he stopped in midsentence having caught sight of the neat filled parchment in front of me, "What is that?"

"My homework," I said casually.

He snatched it from my grasp. Amber eyes flashed across the parchments, pupils dilating in interest.

"You wrote this?" he asked me, "When?"

"Right now," I told him.

He raised an eyebrow in skepticism but I was saved from having to hear an insult to my intellect by Sirius sulking in to the room. He looked ready to murder someone. He glared at a cluster of Hufflepuff's sitting nearest to him and they flinched away in terror.

"Good morning class," McKinnon said appearing in the middle of the classroom, half the class still jumped.

Professor McKinnon was not like other Professor's. She was young for one. She had graduated two years early from Hogwarts and she had been immediately admitted into Auror training, something unheard of. She was fresh from Auror training and was barely twenty years old, and she had agreed to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Because as she put it, "Training young people is like training an army, you need the most brilliant officer to stay back and train the troops to be exactly like him."

It had been the first day of class and everyone had looked at her strangely, and more than a couple of boys had turned their heads to look back again. She was really very beautiful. Long black hair wound neatly into a twist on her neck, grey eyes stared up at you fiercely, a beauty in itself. She was tall and slim and she moved as fast as lightning. Everyone in the class learned to respect her and understand though she was hardly older she was ten times as intelligent.

Her class was the class that everyone looked forward too. Even the Slytherin's seemed to enjoy them. In their cold slimy way. I had learned more from her in that in the two months than I had in the previous six years from any other of my Defense teachers. She was harsh though. She drilled us all as hard as she could, and we were better because of it. Some of the people hated her for it, but most seemed to shine. Students that had trouble in every other class seemed to thrive in the environment.

"Today, class," she announced, "We will be learning a complicated bit of magic that I'm sure you'll find very useful far too soon. It's called the Patronus charm."

There were several gasps from throughout the room, and a general amount of whispering as all of the Muggleborns asked their neighbors what a Patronus charm was. Remus looked as if Christmas had come early, and he smiled widely at me. A Patronus charm was a charm used to repeal Dementors. Seeing as they sucked the happiness out of you, a Patronus was like a symbol of hope and warmth and it drove the monsters off. The Marauders had been working on it, but the farthest we'd gotten had been a thin grey mist. Remus had claimed we just needed more practice.

"Or maybe, we need someone to teach us," I'd quipped.

He'd scowled flicking his wand. Sirius and I cracked up as a bouquet of flowers erupted from the end.

"Patronus's are one of the most difficult pieces of magic, so don't be discouraged if you don't get it in this class. We have two weeks to get this down. It's harder of course when Dementors are there, but it also sets a pressure upon you. Be warned."

Her tone was serious and she seemed to stare everyone in the eyes.

"The incantation is Expecto Patronum. In order for the spell to work you must think of the happiest moment you can think of. Draw it to your mind, let in envelope you. Your entire being must be filled with happiness and then only then can you say the incantation. Pair up!"

I turned to Remus, to see Leslie Trench clinging to his side. He looked very disgruntled at his current position and I chuckled to myself as my eyes scanned the room. Rose moved over to me looking better than she had thirty minutes prior. She took my hand and pulled me to the center of the room where all the desks had been moved to the sidelines.

"Got a memory you're thinkin' of using?" Rose asked me curiously.

I shrugged trying to think of the happiest moment in my life. My first thought was of the first prank the Marauders had pulled, but I'd tried that before. My second was of the making of the Marauders map, but now that I thought of it, parts of that had been extraordinarily boring.

But then an image flashed before my mind. Call it intuition, call it obsession, infatuation, whatever. I like to think that it was an insane grasp at the future. But I could see Lily in my mind, this as a feat was not unusual, she was in my thoughts more than normal. And she was kissing me, which also wasn't extremely abnormal. But it wasn't a peck on the lips sort of kiss, nor was it one that was it made of passion. It was just a kiss to show that she loved me, and it meant more to me than life itself.

"Expecto Patronum."

A stag burst from the tip of my wand. He was a majestic creature, his legs moving with grace as he danced through the air and I vaguely wondered if that was what I looked like as Prongs. The students gazed at the stag in amazement. Watching as he reared his antlers and pranced around the classroom. The patronus seemed to bring a feeling of happiness and contentment, something most classrooms had lacked in the past year. The stag vanished in thin air as my concentration lapsed and the blue mist seemed to settle over the class, and they seemed to absorb it, laughing and talking among themselves.

"Excellent, Potter," I heard McKinnons voice call out,"50 points to Gryffindor."

Surprisingly none of the other houses groaned, they seemed in far too much of a good mood, too.

"James," Rose whispered, "What memory did you use?"

I blushed slowly and she looked at me curiously, blue eyes seeming to look straight into my soul.

"Nothing," I said quickly turning away.

It hurt me to hurt her.

"It was Lily, wasn't it?" she asked, though it was more of a statement than a question. "James, it's all right."

She placed her hand on my face and I placed my hand on her arm, but I couldn't shrug her off this time.

"She is yours, even if she doesn't know it yet. Time will tell. Do not fear that you will hurt me. You already have."

I made a move to stop her, to protect her from- from who I wasn't sure, myself perhaps. But she would not let me speak.

"I have told you many times. I love you."

She said this fiercely as if daring me to object. I knew her better than that.

"But you are not mine, James. No matter what I want, you will always be hers. Just wait until she notices."

She turned away then and where her hand had been felt cold. It hurt me to know that there was nothing I could do to stop her pain. That came on its own, and I knew that she would not accept if I asked her to go out with me. She had it in her mind, and once she had made up her mind there was no stopping her. She was left to suffer alone. For nothing I could do would ease her suffering.