Written for Round 1 of Bookwormlovesharrypotter's Marauder Challenge.

Hogwarts was a magical place during Christmastime. Well, it was magical all the time, but there was something about Christmastime that made it even more so. Log fires were always roaring, teachers were less strict, there was excitement in the air…and all of that's not even mentioning the house-elves' amazing cooking skills being put to use for the feasts. And yet, when most students had gone home for the holidays, Lily Evans found many places in the castle to be cold and unwelcoming.

Lily was one of the few students who had chosen to stay at Hogwarts for the Christmas holidays. Most everyone else had welcoming families to go back home to. It wasn't that Lily's parents wouldn't have loved to have her home for the holidays. Lily had informed them that she would be staying at school because even in her first year, there was a lot of homework to do and textbooks to study. Her parents understood; Lily's studies had always come first.

However, there really wasn't all that much homework and Lily would have really loved to go home. She wanted more than anything to see her parents again, sleep in her own bedroom, taste her mother's delicious Christmas dinner. She didn't, however, want to see her sister, Petunia. The last time they had spoken, Petunia had called her a…a…no. Lily wouldn't say the word, not even in the safety and solitude of her own mind.

Lily sat in front of the roaring fire in Gryffindor Common Room. There was nobody else there, and Lily suspected that everyone else from her house had left on the train this morning to go home. But no – she heard someone coming down the stairs from the boys' dormitories.

Please don't let it be Potter, she silently pleaded. Anyone except that git Potter.

And it wasn't James Potter. It was almost worse.

"Morning, Evans," Sirius Black said as he sat down next to her. He was a git, too, and the fact that he was Potter's best friend didn't exactly help matters.

"Morning," she replied curtly.

"Why aren't you on the train?" he asked her.

"I should be the one asking you that," Lily snapped. "Don't you have a nice pureblood family that accepts you?"

Sirius's smile vanished from his face. He stiffened. Lily could tell that she'd brought up a sensitive subject, but she wasn't going to apologize. Not yet, anyway. Not until he said something.

"Yes and no." he finally said. "Yeah, sure I have a pureblood family. No, they're certainly not nice, and no, they definitely do not accept me."

Lily frowned. "They're all wizards. You're a wizard. Why don't they accept you, then?" She dimly registered that she was talking to one of her sworn enemies, but her curiosity made her stay and listen.

A smile reappeared on Sirius's face, but it was a different smile. Maybe sad, maybe wistful, but certainly not happy. "You do know that Slytherins and Gryffindors don't exactly get along, right?"

Lily rolled her eyes. Of course she knew that. She'd been questioned enough about her long-lasting friendship with Severus Snape. But what did this have to do with anything? Unless… "Your family is all Slytherins?" she asked incredulously.

"Except for me," Sirius said. It almost seemed as if he was boasting. "And…they all work for Voldemort, too."

Lily was confused, but then she remembered the stories that she had heard about an evil man who wanted to kill people like her because of their parentage. She was told that he was not extremely powerful yet, but many people – especially Slytherins – believed that he would be.

"What about you?" Sirius asked. "What was all that about not having a family that accepts you?"

"When did I say that?" Lily asked defensively. Sirius raised an eyebrow. Lily sighed, and before she could think about what she was doing, she was telling this boy everything, about how her sister hated her, about she had kind of sort of lied to her parents to be able to stay at Hogwarts, about how she didn't know what she was going to do when she had to stay with Petunia all summer.

At the end of her tale, there was a silence. "I'm going to get breakfast," Lily said, getting up and heading over to the portrait hole. Turning around, she said to Sirius, "You do know that I still think you're a git, right? One conversation doesn't change that."

Sirius's regular smile was back on his face. "Whatever you say, Evans," he said cheerily, going back into his dormitory to get ready for who knows what kind of mischief. Lily sighed as she heard a large crash followed by a loud yell.

He's a git, Lily said to herself. Yes, he was a bit more understandable, and maybe a bit lonely, but that didn't make him any less of a git…right?