Hello there :)
I know, I've already done a L/J fic, but I had this brilliant idea, and it's going to be completely different from my other one. I really hope you enjoy it, and please, please, read and review and comment and give me any advice, because I love getting advice! And emails! Anyway, on with the story :)

Just Keep Breathing: Chapter One

Dear Diary,

I feel really bad about how I treated Sev at the end of last year. I mean, yes, he did call me a … - but we've been friends for five years. Can a friendship like that end that quickly? He was my first real friend, the one who not only accepted my freakishness, but the first person I met that was a wizard like myself. We were inseperable for a few years then – and then he started spending more time with his Slytherin friends, who, unfortunately, are really into Dark Magic.

Maybe it's one of those cases where he's hanging out with the wrong crowd. I mean, I know he's a good person somewhere deep down, but he's not showing it, and I don't think I can be friends with somebody like that. And, I mean, everybody wonders why I still hung out with him all that time, and why I thought he was a good guy.

You know what, maybe Potter was right, maybe Sev is a jerk. Well, that doesn't mean Potter's not. Potter's a git, actually, and I hate the fact that I might actually agree with him on this one. You know -

"Uh, Tigger, can you please get off?" Lily Evans asked her cat angrily. She'd been right in the middle of a rant about the two men – no, they didn't deserve to be called that – boys that she hated the most in the world, when her cat had decided that it wanted to be petted.

"Come on, this isn't funny," she told him, nudging him. "Get off!"

"Lily?" her sister, Petunia asked from the doorway. "Uh, mum and dad said that they need to talk to us, right now." Lily noticed that Petunia was surprisingly quiet and not unhappy to have to talk to her sister – which meant that something was wrong.

"What's up?" Lily asked, concern sprouting in her voice. "Tuney, what's wrong?"

"I don't know!" she snapped, reverting back to her normal self for a moment. "Just... can you come downstairs?"

"Yeah," Lily nodded, putting her pen down and leaving Tigger covering her journal. She never finished her journal entry.

The rest of the Summer passed in a daze. Lily stuck to her monotonous and boring routine, which consisted of three daily meals, feeding her cat, and staring out of her bedroom window for countless hours, thinking over her current predicament. What was she going to do?

She had two choices: she could stay at home and attend a Muggle high school that year, which meant that she would be closer to home in case anything bad happened; or she could return to Hogwarts and risk not being there for dire circumstances.

It was during one of her staring out the window sessions when Petunia knocked on her sister's door. Lily didn't answer.

Petunia walked in anyway, and sat down at the desk, spotting the journal entry from several days previously. She started to read it, but then realised that she probably shouldn't, and put it up on one of the higher shelves. Then, she swivelled around to talk to her sister.

"What are you thinking about?" Petunia asked.

"Nothing," Lily lied.

"Lily, I know we don't really get along anymore, and I know you're gone for most of the year, but I do still recognise when something's wrong with you, okay? And, in case you haven't noticed, this affects me too, so I'm probably one of the only ones you can talk to about this."

"Go away," Lily said quietly, turning over in her bed so that she was facing the wall, away from Petunia.

That was when Petunia spotted the stack of letters, piled haphazardly on the desk. Confused, she picked them up and started filing through them. Petunia guessed that they were all from the past few days, as Lily had been rather withdrawn during that time period, but she then noticed that they were going back well into the past month. Most were from the same person, but a few further up the top were from other people. All were simply addressed to 'Lily Evans'.

"Who are all these letters from?" Petunia asked interestedly.

"GET OUT!" Lily screamed at her sister, sitting up in bed, her nostril's flaring.

Petunia jumped preemptively, ready for an ornament to drop off one of the shelves, or a stuffed animal to come flying at her, but nothing happened. Petunia stared at her sister in wonder.

Lily, though she hadn't realised it yet, was surprised as well. Normally when she lost her temper, some magic seeped through and strange things occurred. Had she finally controlled it? Or – even worse – had the recent shock that had turned her world around stunted her magic?

"Fine," Petunia said, "I'm leaving. But your school booklist is here. I thought you might need it to get your books before you go back to school this year."

Lily glared at her sister, who then left the room.

Petunia was eating ice-cream on the last day of the Summer holidays when there was a knock on the door. Taking her bowl with her, she opened the door.

"Hi," she said, looking at the girl on the other side of the door, who was dressed very oddly. "You're Lily's friend?"

"How did you know?" she asked cheerily. "I'm Alice Prewett."

"Wild guess," Petunia said, glancing at the girl's attire again. "Well, she's upstairs, but I don't guarantee she'll talk to you."

"Thank you," Alice replied, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and following Petunia into the house.

"First door on the left," Petunia told Alice, before heading back to the kitchen.

Alice, who had been deeply concerned about Lily the past few weeks, as she hadn't replied to any of the letters that she'd sent, restrained herself from running up the staircase to talk to her friend. When she got there, however, she knocked furiously on the door.

"GO AWAY!" came the angry voice of Lily Evans from inside. This startled Alice more than the unanswered letters did. She turned the door handle, only to find that it was locked. Being underage, Alice didn't dare use magic to unlock the door... yet.

"Lilian Samantha Evans, you open this door right now before I break it down!" she called through the wood.

She could almost feel Lily's surprise at this.

"I don't want to talk to you," Lily finally answered, and didn't make any effort to unlock the door.

"If that's how you want to do this," Alice muttered to herself, pulling out of her back pocket her wallet. She hadn't been serious when she said she was going to break down the door, but she was still going to get into that room if it was the last thing she did.

Sorting through the wallet, she finally found what she was looking for – a copy of a hotel key card from a muggle hotel that her father had made so that Alice was able to get in and out as she pleased, back from when they'd stayed in America for a month. Alice had seen this trick used before on television, and hoped that she could get it right, as she only had one card.

Thankfully, it did, and the door clicked open. Lily turned around and sat up in her bed, staring at Alice. "How did you know how to do that?"

"Picked it up somewhere," Alice replied, holding up the mangled key card. "Hey, at least it worked," she shrugged.

"What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? I think a better question is – why the HELL haven't you been answering my letters? We had a great penpal relationship going for a while there, and then suddenly one day – nothing! Do you know how scared I got? I thought you'd been killed or something – and don't tell me that that's stupid, because in times like these it's a very real possibility. Mum wouldn't even let me come and check up on you! The only reason I am here is because I told mum that I was going to go visit Frank."

"Frank Longbottom?" Lily asked. "Why would you go visit him? Isn't he in seventh year this year?"

"Oh, yeah, you would know I'm going out with him if you'd read my freaking letters!" she said. "What's going on with you?"

Lily sighed and turned away from her friend. "I don't want to talk about it," she replied, and resumed her usual pastime of staring out the window.

"Too bad, sunshine," Alice said, planting herself in Lily's desk chair. "I'm not leaving until you do."

"Alice, just stop trying to help. There's nothing you can do, so why even bother, okay? Just leave."

"What makes you think there's nothing I can do to help?"

"I don't think, I know," Lily snapped.

"What's wrong?" Alice asked one more time.

Lily didn't answer her, but continued staring out the window. Alice rolled her eyes and spun around in the swivel chair that lived in front of Lily's desk. She too, spotted the stack of letters. Interested, she picked it up and started flicking through them. There had been one a day from Alice for the past three weeks, there was a Hogwarts letter in there, and every single day since the beginning of the Summer holidays, there was a letter from Severus Snape. And every single letter was unopened.

"Lily, why haven't you opened your Hogwarts letter?"

"I'm not going back this year," Lily replied, still staring at the sky.

"You're joking," Alice laughed. "Of course you're going back."

"I'm not," Lily said, not facing her friend. She didn't want Alice to know that she was crying. "Something's come up. You're going to have to go without me."

Alice finally gave up. "If that's what you want, then I'm not going to stop you," Alice snapped. "I would say see you at school, but you're not going. So, I guess I'll never see you again?"

"Probably, yeah," Lily said, bored. "Bye, Alice."

As Alice left Lily's bedroom and house, she couldn't shake off the feeling that something was really wrong with Lily.