That night, Lily was on her side of the curtain getting undressed when James said, "Lily, do you need anything?"

"What?" Hearing his voice when she was naked did a little more than shake her up. She was not at all used to this closeness, not with him. She'd spent most of her years keeping as much distance from him as possible and here they were sharing a hotel room.

"Do you need anything? To brush your teeth or wash your face or anything?"

"I just brushed my teeth."

"What about a drink of water?"

"James, do these questions have a point?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"If I told you, you'd smack me across the face."

She rolled her eyes. She felt like smacking him now. She told him so, adding, "So you might as well tell me," trying to keep the curiosity out of her voice.

"I just want to see what you're wearing. If you needed something from the kitchen or the bathroom I would have refused to get it for you so you'd have to walk past my side of the room."

"Go to sleep, James," Lily muttered, pulling back the covers on her bed.

"Won't you at least tell me what you wear to bed?"

"Nothing," Lily said shortly, and regretted it; James was silent for a few moments, and she knew he was thinking about that. She could pratically hear his eyes widen and jaw drop.

"If you really want the truth, I'm wearing a one of my father's flannel shirts."

"Ah," James said. He put his hands behind his hand and looked at the ceiling, smiling. "Soft."

"James, I'd really rather you not think about this, all right? Can you do that for me?"

"You shouldn't have told me. I'll be thinking about it all night."

Lily sighed. It would be better the sooner this week could end. Living so nearly to her was making James feel and say things he normally wouldn't, she was sure of it.

"Go to sleep, James," Lily said again. She turned the lamp off and lay down.

~*

"Hey, Evans?" James' voice broke the silence of the hotel room later as they both lay on the edge of sleep.

"Mm," Lily murmured into her pillow, lacking the strength for anything else.

"What do you dream about?"

"Could you ask me tomorrow morning?" Lily said sleepily, rolling over.

"No. Tomorrow you will be awake and conscious enough to yell at me for asking you."

"I don't remember my dreams."

"Never?"

"Rarely."

"What was the last dream you remember?"

She sighed. If she didn't answer now, he'd probably bug her about until he talked himself to sleep. "The dream I had on my seventeenth birthday, I guess."

"What was is about?"

Lily let a frustrated breath out. "I was lying in a hotel room with James Potter --"

"In the same bed?" He couldn't resist.

"No, in separate beds, with a makeshift barrier between them, and he asked me a stupid question just before I went to sleep so I got up and suffocated him with his own pillow."

"Ha ha ha," James said sarcastically. "If you're not going to tell me about your last dream, can I tell you about mine?"

"No."

He went on anyway, his voice level and calm. "I dreamt that I was lying in a hotel room with Lily Evans. We were in separate beds. I wanted to tell her about my dreams but she was too tired to listen to me and didn't like me very much anyway, so doing something to make me happy was out of the question." He waited for a protest but didn't get one. "I could kind of understand why she didn't like me. In the past I had done and said and been things I wasn't proud of. But as I grew up I began to see that while she complained as much as I gloated, the things she said had some truth. Once I realized this, I started to take notice of my behavior more. It was difficult, but through much hard work and a little time, I learned to break habits of hexing first years, intimidating Slytherins for fun, and ruffling my hair to make it look like I'd just got back from a rough Quidditch practice. Now, in the hotel room, I confessed to Lily that even though she has verbally insulted my every day of my life since our fifth year, I still like her. Lily listened patiently until I finished with my confession, and then apologized for insulting me. I apologized, too, for every idiotic, conceited thing I've done and said, but assured her that I've changed these past couple years. I'm not the same person I used to be and I'm desperately hoping now that I deserve your respect, if nothing more."

He stopped here, his heart beating rapidly, listening intently.

But the steady, heavy breathing on the other side of the curtain told him she was asleep. She had been asleep for a while.

He sighed, rolled over to face the wall -- not the curtain -- and closed his eyes.