A/N: This took way longer than I expected it to; I've been working on it for almost 2 months! Mostly because I hit a huge writer's block in the middle, but still. Warning you all now, this is super depressing (at least, I tried my best to make it that way). Also, I love italics. I think I deleted some though :-( . So… enjoy my sad story! Oh, and also, this is a long one-shot.

James Potter had watched Lily Evans for more than five years, and he had noticed just about everything about her. The way her silky red hair swirled around her when she moved quickly. The way her green eyes flashed when she was mad. The way her hand cramped up around her quill when she was writing. The way… well, James could go on forever. But something he had noticed puzzled him. It had taken him a while to see because of its subtlety, but people didn't touch Lily. Her friends would cluster around her and tease her and such, but they didn't hug her, or drag her off by her wrist. Sure, sometimes they'd tap her on the shoulder or play with her hair, but… James couldn't really describe it. They touched her, but they didn't touch her, not really. And, more than once, when one of Lily's friends tried to hug her or take her hand, she flinched and pulled away. It was the most bizarre thing, and James had no idea why she was that way. But, he thought sadly, he had very little chance of finding out, since Lily pretty much hated him.

***

Lily, her friend Mary, and a few other girls stood in a group near the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall after breakfast, laughing together. The other girls stood shoulder to shoulder, but Lily had a small space around her, just enough to ensure that nobody would touch her. She didn't just dislike being touched; she was afraid of it. Just then, someone tapped her shoulder. She flinched slightly and turned around, then scowled.

"What do you want?" she snapped at Severus Snape, who she referred to in her mind as her 'ex-friend'.

"I just- "

She didn't let him finish. "Whatever. I don't want to hear it. Go away." It hurt a little to be so sharp with her first wizard friend, but he had proven that he thought she was just a common, low mudblood last year. He didn't care about her. Not anymore. So why does he keep trying to talk to you? asked a snide voice in her head. Shut up, she told it, turning back to her real friends.

"You need-" Snape tried again.

"I don't need anything that you can give me," Lily said harshly. "Now leave me alone." She heard a defeated sigh behind her, and footsteps retreating.

***

Severus was alone as he paced out of the Great Hall, pushed past the insufferable Gryffindor git, James Potter, and headed towards the Slytherin Common Room. He wished he had the guts to tell Lily that she did need him, but she wouldn't listen, or believe it. But he knew that it was true.

*Flashback*

Severus crouched in the bushes outside Lily's house, wishing he could do something. Lily cowered on the porch at her father's feet as he hit her. There were bruises on her face and arms, and the expression on her face was terrified. When her dad finally went inside, she ran to the bushes where Severus was.

"I knew you would be here," she whispered when she saw him.

"I'll always be here."

She burst into tears, burying her face in his shirt.

"It hurts," she whimpered.

"I know." He hugged her, comforting, trying not to press on her various cuts and bruises. And he know that he was the only person she would let touch her.

Ever again.

*End Flashback*

***

James walked toward Lily and her group of friends across the Great Hall. Lily saw him coming, and almost turned around and ran away. She didn't want to talk to James Potter just then. Correction: She didn't want to talk to James Potter ever. He was such a git. Or if she didn't run, maybe her friends would save her. But no, true to form, the minute they spotted Potter, the girls around her started giggling.

"Hey, Lily," one of them said. "Here comes Potter. Betcha five galleons he wants to talk to you."

"I would take you up on that, but you're probably right," Lily muttered. "Unfortunately."

"You are sooo lucky, Lily," another girl groaned. "You do realize that the rest of us would just die for the kind of attention Potter gives you? And you just throw it away." She sighed dramatically.

"You can have him," Lily replied. "I don't want him."

"Are you sure?" the first girl asked. "I think you want him."

Lily was almost glad when James reached them, if only because it made the girls shut up. Or, at least they shut up until James said, "Hey, Lily. Can I talk to you?"

The girls broke into a teasing chorus of, "Oooooohh, Liiiii-llly!"

"Oh, shut up." Lily rolled her eyes. James reached out to touch her shoulder and she jerked back, fighting her instinctive panic at the touch. "No," she said firmly. "I have… stuff to do."

She started walking away as quickly as she could without running, but James jogged after her, ignoring the cat-calls of the girls behind them. "Aw, come on, Lily," he coaxed. "I don't bite."

Lily grimaced at his choice of words. "Sure. I've seen the way you treat people, James Potter, and I'm not impressed. Leave me alone."

"You mean the way I treat Snivillus," James clarified.

"That's not his name," Lily corrected automatically. But then she remembered that she didn't need to defend Severus anymore. He had been as rotten to Lily as James had always been to him. We're not friends anymore, Lily told herself firmly as her eyes started to fill. Sev doesn't care about me. That's all there is to it. She knew that that wasn't all there was to it, but she was done crying about what Severus thought about her and their ruined friendship. She walked faster, trying to get away from James.

He kept pace with her. "Please, Lily," he was saying. "I just want to talk. And besides, you know that Snivillus deserved what I gave him. I don't know why you still defend him. He called you 'mudblood'."

He had touched a nerve. Lily whirled furiously around to face him. "Leave me ALONE, Potter!" she yelled. He gaped after her as she stormed off down the corridor.

"Jeez," he muttered. "I'm not the one who called her that." He looked down to see someone's calico cat trot up to him and look at him reproachfully. "Well, it's true," he told it. "Stupid Snivillus did call her that and she never speaks to him anymore. Why does she bother to defend someone who doesn't even like her?" Okay, he had to admit that that was a lie. Snape tried to talk to her all the time, tried to make up. Lily was the one who wouldn't talk to him. "Or that she doesn't even like?" James added, because that was clearly true. He glanced down again to see how his audience was responding to this, but the cat was gone.

Lily rushed down the corridor, fiercely wiping angry tears from her eyes. Why did stupid Potter have to remind her of what Sev had called her? And why did he always have to bring up that ways he was better than Sev? "What the heck is his problem?" she asked a cat twining around her ankles. She stopped to pick it up and bury her face in its soft, calico fur. "Why can't he just realize how much I hate him?" She wasn't sure if she was talking about Potter or Snape or both. "Stupid idiots." The cat mewed at her. "They're both worth about as much as a pile of dragon dung," she muttered. She glanced up above her head, and grimaced. Tinsel. Bells. "Dang it," she hissed, not unlike an angry cat. The non-angry cat in her arms looked inquiringly up at her. "Christmas holidays," she explained with venom. "And I have to go home."

4 Weeks Later (after the holidays)

Lily hurt. Badly. All over. She winced as she rolled out of bed, and was simply glad that the four-poster bed she was rolling out of was in her dormitory at Hogwarts and not in her room at home. She tried to straiten her right arm and bit her lip against the shriek of pain threatening to escape. She mentally cursed her father for doing this to her, starting in English, moving to French, hissing the little Spanish she knew, and finishing with a few choice words a friend from Germany had taught her. She wished she knew more languages. She carefully limped to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She didn't like what she saw.

Bruises spread across her cheeks. Her lip was split and she had a cut streaking down her jawline. Through her white nightshirt, she could see more bruises blossoming across her chest and arms, and though she couldn't see through her navy blue pajama pants, she knew that her legs were as black and blue as the rest of her. Her right arm looked… well… awful, and it felt worse. Pain lanced through it at every movement, and it was all she could do to hope that it wasn't broken.

Grabbing her clothes for lack of something better to do, she tried not to think of her father's fit of fury that had gotten her into this state. She firmly vowed never to let go of her wand again.

She dressed, and was glad to see that her robes covered all of her bruises except one on her hand, another at the base of her neck, and the ones on her face. She scrutinized those as she picked up her make-up kit; she had tried to cover injuries up by magic before, and the results had been very painful. She wasn't stupid enough to try that again. Luckily- or unluckily, as the case may be- this sort of thing had happened often enough before that she was pretty good at putting on makeup so that it looked as if nothing had happened to her. She applied it carefully, brushing across her various injuries with color, and in ten minutes, her face looked almost perfectly normal, if a bit swollen. The bruise on her hand she could do nothing about; any makeup on it would be rubbed off quickly. She left the bathroom feeling pleased with herself, and even marginally less sore. Grabbing her wand, she headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast.

She'd forgotten the bruise at the base of her neck.

At breakfast, Lily, who was tired of being surrounded by a gaggle of giggling girls, sat next to Sirius Black, who was the one boy she knew who wasn't a jerk or a git. It wasn't like he didn't have an ego, but at least it wasn't blown up to five times the usual size like James Potter's was. And besides, Sirius didn't ask too many questions.

He looked at her for a moment before lightly touching the discoloration at the base of her neck. "What happened here?" he inquired. "Looks like it hurts." Okay, well, usually he didn't ask too many questions.

"Yeah, well," she muttered, and avoided answering the question by stuffing a large forkful of eggs into her mouth.

***

Severus watched Lily enter the Great Hall. He didn't need to be told that she had gone home for Christmas; it showed. He was fairly attuned to the signs that could be seen whenever she had been with her father for a couple of days. He had been around her long enough. She limped slightly and was favoring her right arm a little too heavily. She was also wearing a bit too much makeup, and he could see the nasty blue-black color on her neck. He hit her hard this time, didn't he? Severus thought savagely. He wanted to rip Lily's father limb from limb for what he had done to his daughter. But he couldn't. And Lily wouldn't let him help her. He mentally cursed himself. Why had he called Lily a mudblood, even in his moment of humiliation? That wasn't how he thought of her, ever. She was too beautiful for such an ugly name.

Lily was glad when breakfast ended so she could escape Sirius and his questions. He was way too perceptive and she wanted to avoid the whole situation. He opened his mouth, no doubt to ask something else, but she sped away to her next class.

***

Lily felt worse the next day, if that was possible. Her bruises were proving to be more colorful that she'd initially realized, and therefore harder to cover up with makeup. To make matters worse, her right arm had swollen and hurt like hell all the time. She hadn't slept well on account of the pain, and as a result, she felt tired, grumpy, and on the verge of bursting into tears at just about everything.

Her friends noticed.

"You okay, Lily?" they asked. When she just nodded, they turned back to whatever they were doing, but continued to sneak worried glances at her when they thought she wasn't looking. She wasn't surprised. She knew she looked nearly as bad as she felt, in spite of all the cosmetics. She wanted to crawl back in bed and bury herself there, and not come out until-

"Hey, Lily."

She spun angrily, saying, "Go away, Potte- Oh, hey, Sirius."

He smiled easily. "I would say I'm insulted that you thought I was James Potter, but since he is my best friend, I'm kind of obliged to not say things like that."

She gave a sort of smirk-grimace thing; it hurt to change expressions. "So…. What's up?"

He shrugged, shaking his hair out of his face. "Just wondering what you did to your face."

She looked frantically around for something to change the subject. There wasn't anything.

"Lily? You okay? You look a little spaced out."

"What? Oh, sorry. I… fell down the stairs," she invented.

He didn't look particularly convinced. "Uh-huh." But he didn't try to get the truth out of her either. "So how about that History of Magic essay? Do you have any idea what Bins was asking for?"

***

"What happened to her?" James hissed to Sirius in the common room just after lunch that day.

"She says she fell down the stairs," Sirius said dubiously, glancing across the room at Lily, whose black eye was beginning to show through the makeup.

"And you don't belie- Wait, how did you know who I was talking about?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "You used the tone of reverence you reserve only for Lily Evans."

"I don't have a 'tone of reverence'!"

"Yes, you do. But, back to the point, no, I don't believe she fell down the stairs." Sirius scowled.

"Why not?"

"Well, because, A) That's an extremely overused and obvious excuse, B) I thing she has more bruises than you can get from a fall down the stairs, and, C) She always seems very eager to get off the subject when I mention it. Most people play up to their injuries to get special treatment. At least, they do if they don't care if anyone knows how they were hurt. But she doesn't want anyone talking about her injuries, which makes me think that there's something wrong. Oh, and she obviously hasn't been to the hospital wing to get anything fixed, probably because Madam Pomfrey always asks questions."

James just stared at him.

"What?" Sirius asked.

"That is probably the only perceptive thing I've ever heard you say," James explained, looking a bit shocked.

Sirius gave him a death glare.

Two Hours Later

James couldn't help but wonder if Sirius was right, if there really was something bad happening to Lily. But that sort of thing seemed so…ridiculous for Lily Evans. She was too sweet, too nice, too…perfect. And he didn't care how stupid and clichéd that last sentence sounded, because, honestly, Lily's perfection didn't sound stupid to him. It was a fact. A beautiful, glorious… He really needed to stop doing that before he lost every train of thought he had. He needed to talk to Lily. Well, basically force her to talk to him, because there was no way she'd talk to him of her own free will. But that wasn't the point.

***

Lily didn't want to talk to anybody ever again. She didn't want to move ever again, and she especially didn't want to think ever again. All of those things would mean acknowledging she existed, which would mean acknowledging the pain. She wanted to kill whoever said that pain fades with time, because her pain was getting worse and worse, physically and mentally. Besides the desperate ache of her battered body, she felt so stupid. She couldn't force herself to forget her 'holidays' and her father. Or that this time, she hadn't been the only on receiving a beating. She felt that if she couldn't protect herself, her sister, at least, shouldn't have to suffer with her. Petunia may hate Lily, but Lily couldn't find it in herself to hate Petunia. Tuney had been so disappointed when she had been rejected from Hogwarts. Besides, she had to live with the man they called their father all the time.

And it didn't help Lily's state of mind that she'd just come out of Arithmancy, her least favorite subject.

Or that James Potter, who was well on his way to becoming the bane of her existence, was heading up the corridor towards her.

"Lily!" he called. "Can I talk to you?"

"No," she snapped, not in the mood to negotiate. She wanted to turn with a flourish and sweep majestically down the corridor away from him, but, unfortunately, her limp denied her that sort of thing. Her second favorite choice would be to die right there, but she was pretty sure there were people who would object to that sort of thing, and also, she would need her wand to kill herself, and it was stashed inside her robes and she wasn't willing to go through the pain it would take to reach inside and get it out. So she was left with facing Potter, which just sucked.

"Come on, Lily," he was pleading. "One talk won't kill you."

"I wouldn't bet on that," she muttered. And, louder, "That doesn't make talking to you any more appealing." She turned away.

"Lily-" He grabbed her right arm just below the elbow- and she screamed. The pain in her arm was like a fire. She couldn't think, she lost her balance and fell, but James still had a death grip on her, so her arm twisted as she went down. She heard a crack, and suddenly, the pain was ten times worse. Then, in response to the pain, the carefully constructed walls in her mind tumbled, and let loose the painful memories she'd been holding back for too many years.

Petunia, cowering behind the couch as Lily received yet another beating. Then, the roles were reversed and Lily cowered while her sister was hit, and Lily couldn't do anything for Petunia, and she was so scared and helpless. Her father, leering down at her as he shouted, "You stupid girl! Can't you do anything right?" And Lily couldn't stop the barrage of memories , and each on pressed itself in her mind. She lost all sense of where she was and what she was doing, and all she knew was the pain, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming.

***

James had no idea what to do. Shrieking breakdowns weren't really his strong point, and he knew he had to get Lily to the hospital wing, but he didn't know how. She definitely couldn't walk, he couldn't exactly drag her, and she was too heavy for him to carry. So, all things considered, he was pretty relieved when Sirius poked his head around the corner.

"What's going on?" he asked. Then, he caught sight of Lily on the floor, now in tears, and his eyes widened. "What the bloody hell happened to her?"

"I have no idea," James replied, even more disconcerted than Sirius by the situation. "Help me get her to the hospital wing."

It was not an easy job. Lily shrieked and writhed every time she was touched, and they had to carry her to get her to the infirmary. Also, her right arm was, beyond the shadow of a doubt, broken, and James was afraid he was jolting it painfully as he moved.

It seemed like a long, long trip, and when they finally reached their destination, Sirius and James both had aching arms and were panting. Hey set her down carefully on the closest bed and collapsed themselves on two nearby chairs, watching Lily worriedly. She wasn't crying or screaming anymore, which was a relief, but she sat on the bed with her knees pulled up to her chest, her eyes wide, staring blindly straight ahead, as she rocked back and forth, whimpering.

Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, bustled over, but stopped, staring, when she saw the state Lily was in. "Oh, my goodness gracious!" she exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. "What happened to this poor girl? She looks traumatized!"

Sirius gave James a pointed look. "I'm not really sure," James said awkwardly. "I grabbed her arm and she started screaming. I don't know what happened.

"What did you do to her?!?"

The furious shout came from the door, and James, Sirius, and Madam Pomfrey spun to see Severus Snape standing there, the hatred on his face poorly disguised.

"What did I do?" James fired back, his defenses immediately going up.

Snape's nostrils flared. "Well, you obviously did something. She hasn't been like this since-"

A moan from the bed cut him off. Snape's eyes flicked to Lily as everyone whirled to face her. She still gazed unseeingly past them all, and sounded like she was trying to speak, the terror on her face too clear. "Kills…" she whispered. "Sev…What if…kills"

***

Lily was trapped inside herself and couldn't get out. The memories wouldn't stop, and they moved through her so fast, she didn't even have time to scream. Some part of her realixed she was being picked up, and released a horrible, agonized sound. She was scared, she didn't know who was carrying her, but thought she should. The memory of who she'd been with was pushed forcefully aside by other, stronger, more important ones.

Worse ones.

It was her sixth birthday, and she accidentally tipped the cake of the table, splattering it all over the floor. She didn't remember much of that, just that her father had hit her over the head, more than once.

She was seven, and had forgotten to feed her goldfish for three days in a row, maybe more, until one day, it was floating belly-up in the fish bowl. Her father screamed at her, asking if this was the respect she showed to the presents he gave her, and that he would teach her some respect. She went out of the house that day with black eye and bruised arms.

She was eight, and didn't even know what she'd done, but this time, her sister got a taste of their father's fist, too. And Lily felt so guilty because her whole life, she'd been taught that everything was her fault and she should be punished for it, and if someone, like Petunia, got in the way, well, that was Lily's fault, too.

On and on the memories assaulted her, until Lily thought she'd burst from the pain of it.

Then, she was ten, and her father's temper had been getting worse and worse lately, and so had the beatings, and that day, Lily stumbled out of the house with a collarbone she knew was broken, right into Severus Snape's arms. And she cried into his shoulder, and whispered, "What if he kills me, Sev?"

What if he kills me, Sev? The question echoed around in her mind, blocking out everything, and just then, she wanted Severus to hug her as he had when they were ten, and tell her everything would be all right.

And then, someone was hugging her, and it was real, not just a memory, and she cried.

5 minutes before

"I didn't do anything!" James shouted again. "I just grabbed her arm and-"

"You idiot! Even an imbecile like you mist have noticed she doesn't like to be touched!" Severus fumed.

James' lips tightened, but he was cut off again by Lily's first intelligible words. "What if he kills me, Sev?"

"Oh, Lily," Severus moaned. He shoved James aside and moved towards her. Putting his arms around her shoulders, he said softly, "It's okay, Lils. Ssshhh, it's okay. He won't hurt you, it's okay."

"Oh!" she gasped. Her eyes lit on Severus' face, and suddenly, she burst into tears, hiding her face in his shoulder as he held her.

2 Days Later

"So, what happened?" James asked Lily. They were alone in the hospital wing. Lily's arm was in a sling, but her face was carefully composed.

"What do you mean?" she said, as if trying to deny that anything had happened at all.

"Oh, please, Lily. You know exactly what I mean."

Her face tightened. "It's none of your business."

"Lily-" He stopped. He didn't know what to say. After seeing her breakdown two days ago, he thought it most certainly was his business, but he couldn't exactly force her to tell him. "Please," was all he could come up with.

She turned her face away, biting her lip. There was a long silence. "My father beat me," she said at last.

"What?"

Her expression was pained. "My father beat me. He hit my sister, too, sometimes." Her voice cracked. She didn't know why she was telling James Potter this, of all people. But she wanted someone other than Severus to know. "I couldn't stop him, and Mum wouldn't, or couldn't, I don't know. But there was nothing to do. No way to help it."

"Lily, why didn't you ever tell anyone?" James asked in a hushed voice.

"I just did," she snapped, then sighed. "Sev knew. But really, nobody can do anything about it. I'm not going to an orphanage. Besides, school's almost over, and afterwards, I can get my own place. I'll live until then."

"Lils…"

She shook her head. "Not now, James. I'm going to sleep." I just called him James. Weird, she thought. She lay down and closed her eyes as his footsteps receded.

She wasn't going to deal with all of this now. She would face James and her father, and, most terrifying of all, her friends, later. But until then, she would sleep, and heal.

***

Returning to the hustle and bustle of school was disconcerting to Lily, especially after her time in the perpetually quiet hospital wing.

Mary was the first to notice her. "Lily!!!" she squealed, and, bounding forward, caught her friend up in a huge bear hug. Lily automatically stiffened, and Mary dropped her arms quickly. "Oh, sorry," she said awkwardly.

Lily was shocked to feel a smile forming on her face. "No, it's okay. Don't worry about it," she said as all her other friends rushed to greet her.

At opposite ends of the Great Hall, James Potter and Severus Snape were watching the spectacle Lily's arrival had created, rolling their eyes, and thinking, "Girls."

A/N: Did you like it? Hate it? Did it (God forbid) make you cry? (I'm flattering myself. I doubt you cried.) Review! Also, this is a one-shot, so no matter how much you beg me, there's not going to be another chapter. Though, if begging will make you review, go ahead…

Thanks for reading! (and reviewing, cause I know you did)

Love,

k