"You'll be trying to hold this over my head for the rest of the year. And I'm just telling you that it won't hold. If you're going to play Joan of Arc, don't get angry when you're burned at the stake for it. Clear? Because I'm not going to feel guilty, and you sure as hell aren't going to be able to make me apologize for letting you get in trouble over it. In fact, you should be thanking me for dislocating that idiot's jaw."
Lily stared. She blinked several times. Calm again, she ran a hand through her long hair and said: "I should be thanking you? How do you figure that?"
"Well for one thing," he replied, "I saved you from a whole lot of drama." Lily began to object, but James continued: "You needed someone to put an end to that business, because you couldn't handle the truth of the situation."
"Which is what exactly?"
"That Snape would have disarmed you." For a moment, the two sixth years stood in reluctant ceasefire; James allowed the words to sink in, and Lily struggled for something to say. "He would have disarmed you and decided once and for all against you, and to tell the truth, Evans, I don't think you could handle it."
Lily exhaled. "And that's why you knocked down Mulciber, is it?" she demanded. "To save me from some unbearable truth?"
– The Life and Times, "Good Girls Say 'I Love You'" Or "Like a Rolling Stone"
