Sixteen-year-old Lily Evans was having a horrible summer break. It could set records, she thought idly, if there were records for such things. If it were simply a prison of her Muggle sister and her new husband's invention, she could take it easily. If it were simply what had happened to her parents, she might be able to cope easier.

But this was a whole new hell, sinking in her bedspread and her misery in the sweltering heat interrupted only by Petunia's shrill voice and Vernon's wary hostility. For Merlin's sake, they wouldn't even let the freak sister have a Popsicle out of their pristine freezer.

She knew it was going to be something like this when she had begged her friends on the platform to write or maybe visit if they knew anything about Muggles, but they were all on holiday and she hadn't counted on this.

Lily could only be thankful that Petunia, eager to get away from childhood and inferiority and Cokeworth, had moved out of their parent's house. Snape couldn't bother her about anything here. Another reminder of the Mudblood incident was all she needed for an even worse summer.

Stretched out on her bed in a t-shirt the green of 1950's cars (cascade green, it was called, and it was her favourite colour) and black shorts, she decided to spend her summer there unless it was necessary not to.

Lily was beyond tears at this point, she had cried harder than she had in her life when she had heard, but something in her had numbed. Petunia skirted the subject of their parents' deaths while shooting a look of utter hatred at Lily, and Vernon took his cues from her.

She knew that all the tension in the house was going to reach a point it couldn't stay at and something would be resolved, but she didn't know how or when.

She also didn't know quite how soon it was, or that she would cause it.

Someone rang the doorbell of the house. Lily hated the sound, dull and Muggle and ordinary like everything else in any house Petunia would ever occupy. She was currently the only person in Number Four, so she stood up, quickly smoothed her red-brown hair, and went to answer the door.

Lily opened the dull, Muggle door and saw James Potter on the step. His hair was as messy as ever, glasses on the bridge of his long nose, dressed perfectly in Muggle clothing.

"Potter," she said, at a loss for anything else to say.

He nodded, actually looking nervous. "Look, I know you probably won't want to see me, and it's awful for everyone to not be here and send me in their stead when I don't actually know anything about you besides common knowledge, but -"

"Shut up," she said, taking him by surprise. "Come in. Please, tell me everything you can about the wizarding world's situation that I don't already know. I'll get you some lemonade or something."

Potter looked surprised. Lily only knew that he was the boy who used to annoy her by hitting on her and it got to her once to the point where she was screaming that everything about him made her sick, but otherwise, they had been on fairly civil terms recently. Sixth year had been a kind of truce.

He followed her into the Dursley's kitchen as she got out two glasses and poured them lemonade. "I hear you haven't been answering your mail."

"Haven't felt like it," Lily admitted, handing him his glass. "I'd have to sound cheerful."

"They're getting worried. Mary Macdonald is in a right state, thinking you've been kidnapped by Death Eaters or whatnot."

She fixed her green eyes on her bare, unpainted toenails. "I've given up."

"On what?"

"My sister. Long story." She sipped her ice-cold lemonade, which was somehow sour and sweet at the same time.

Potter took a sip of his own lemonade with a thoughtful look on his face. "Mary told me your sister hates your guts because you're magic and she's not."

"Pretty much, yeah. Tell Alice, Mary, Robyn, and whoever else might ask that my sister freaks out every time she sees an owl or anything else, that's why I haven't been writing."

He nodded like he understood and, changing the subject abruptly, said, "He's gaining power."

"He Who Must Not Be Named?" Lily asked quietly. She put her glass down on the perfectly scrubbed counter and hoped it would leave a ring.

"He's got Inferi - dead bodies enchanted to do what he wants - and Dementors, and he's using the Unforgivable curses." Potter's face was unusually serious, the window lighting him at an angle that made him look older than sixteen.

She shivered without meaning to and tried to cover it by brushing back a bit of her hair, adding, "And he's ramped up the Muggle-killings. It isn't for any purpose, it's just their own, sadistic, twisted, insane fun."

Potter sipped his lemonade, leaning back against the counter. "They killed Albert Greengrass, the junior minister, a couple weeks ago. His entire family. Just because he married a Muggle woman, they saw fit to kill him, her, their three-year-old daughter, and their six-year-old son. They tortured them until -"

"I don't want to hear any more."

"Sorry," he muttered, and a faint blush spread across his freckles.

Lily picked up her glass and took another sip, noting with a surprising lack of satisfaction that there was a ring. The lemonade didn't taste quite so sweet, and the liquid was trembling in the glass. "It's okay," she lied, than, on an impulse, told the truth. "You might not be as bad as I thought you were for the past six years."

"Thanks," said Potter. "Evans, if you ever want -"

"Lily," she interrupted quietly. "It's Lily, not Evans. Sorry, go on."

He grinned like half the battle was won already and put his lemonade down on the countertop. "Lily, then. If you ever want to come and hang out with the Marauders this year, you're welcome to. I'm apparently not as bad as you thought I was, Remus and Peter like you, and Sirius respects you, even if he won't admit it."

For the first time in what seemed like months, her lips curved up in a smile that actually reached her striking green eyes. Then the back door opened and a closed expression came over her face, erasing any readable emotion.

"Please be nice," Lily whispered to Potter.

"Only if you'll call me James," he whispered back with a wink.

She nodded like he thought it was a good exchange, steeling herself up for whatever might happen. Petunia walked through to the kitchen, the contented smile on her face vanishing as she looked with oddly colourless eyes at Lily, then James, then the lemonade.

"How dare you?" Petunia hissed, her face reddening. "Bringing more of your lot? Is he here to finish the job?"

Lily's face was pale and carefully blank. She could have been wearing a porcelain mask. "Which job?"

"Your skull-and-snake lot have done enough to this family, you bloody little -"

"You think I'm with them?" Lily asked, cracking her porcelain. Her face coloured furiously, eyes filled with angry tears as her voice went low and dangerous. James knew from experience that if there was a time to run for cover, it was now. "I'm your bloody sister!"

Petunia looked livid. "Oh, and that counts for so much, running off to Spinner's End every summer and that freak school and not coming back unless you were ready to show off or let your abnormal friends kill our -"

"My friends?" She had gone too far. "My friends would never kill anyone, least of all them. We're at war, if your brain can possibly comprehend that, and Severus Snape and his lot have chosen their side. The opposite side."

"You're lucky I keep you around for the summer, you prissy freak!" She spat.

Lily let out a little hysterical laugh, a tear spilling down her cheek. "Lucky? You keep me around so the neighbours won't talk, not because you want to. I'm lucky?"

"Yes, you are!"

Spinning around, Lily looked frightening and slightly mad. James jumped back into the counter, intimidated. She looked on the brink of screaming, but in a surprisingly calm voice, she said, "James, I'd appreciate it if you left now. We have some things to sort out here. I really will write you."

"It's been a slice," he said, purposely using the Muggle expression. "See you at Hogwarts, Lily."

James heard the first part of Petunia's furious shout at her sister, but for the sake of Lily's dignity, he stepped out of the front door on the sunny, paved street. He would write Lily, that was for sure.

Lily,

Hi. I'd say I hope you're having a good summer but you're obviously not, so I'll ask you how you're doing after that row with Petunia. Not to press or anything (I'd be amazed if you even wrote back, honestly), what was she yelling about? I know we've been friends for maybe a day so you can feel free to write back a letter with the words ARROGANT TOERAG all over it.

Affectionately yours,

James

Hi, James.

You're right. I had a bit of a row with Petunia after you left. Translate that to: I had a row of epic proportions with her for nearly half an hour after you left ending with both of us in tears and screaming at each other. She always hated that she can't do magic and takes it out on me every summer.

You might have noticed how, um, volatile I was in fifth year. Or maybe you didn't. I don't know. I was, anyways. My parents had died in one of those sick Muggle-killings those Death Eaters love to do. Petunia came home to find the Dark Mark over the house. She thinks I brought it in them by being a witch and she's trying to make me live like a Muggle and screams if I mention anything magical.

Sorry, I'm rambling. You probably shouldn't send another owl, seeing as Vernon (her awful husband, reminds me of a pig) nearly killed yours. I'll see you September first, and I might even sit with you lot!

Lots of love (don't read things into that, it's just how I end letters)

Lily

"Lily! Why weren't you writing bak to me, or any of us?" Marlene McKinnon asked her on Platform 9 3/4. "James gave some stupid excuse about your sisters husband not liking owls -"

"He tried to kill James's owl," Lily confirmed, already in her school uniform. "I didn't want any accidents on my hands, I would've written otherwise, I swear. I had the summer from hell, and the heat was just to enhance the torture."

The two seventh-year girls started to chat, and Lily couldn't help but notice a new brightness in her blue eyes and the way she held herself a little straighter. Marlene was of age, Merlin help the wizarding world.

"Hey, Lily."

She glanced around and the small smile she has given Marlene grew to light up her whole face. She looked happier than she had done all summer. "James!"

Lily, to Marlene's utter shock, gave James a small hug before she asked, "So, how was your summer, seeing as you already know all about mine?"

He grinned and resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. "Not bad. Sirius came to stay a little while after I visited you."

"Good," she replied, then, "Is there an extra seat in your compartment?"

"For you, always," James replied with a flirty little smile that he shouldn't have been able to pull off, but did.

Marlene, taller than Lily but shorter than James, stepped forwards, raising her long-fingered hands and asking, "When did this happen? Last years ended in the key of Merlin, Potter is such an annoying git, not Merlin, Potter is such a great friend!

Lily blushed. James burst out laughing.

"Seriously, though," she said. "When did this friendship thing happen?"

"It's amazing," said Lily quietly as the train station lighting illuminated her face in a strange way, "how one summer can change your perspective on things."

How did you like it? Did I get the characters right, wrong, spot on, or is the dialogue wooden? Do you like how I thought that James and Lily never really hated each other, just were at odds sometimes after he hit on her for a while? Review to tell me any of the above, or anything I didn't include!