Firstly, I would like to say MERRY CHRISTMAS! (not just to Haley (maraudersmainlady) on tumblr – this is her Secret Santa – but to everyone!) Secondly, I'd like to apologise for this shoddy excuse for a fic. I left it far too late and didn't put enough effort into it. BUT I do promise that in the next few days I'll go through and amend it and make it a lot better, and add loads more stuff (the chapters just got shorter and shorter as time ran out! Sorry! ), so check back in a week to see how that's going.

-titaniumroze

First year

Splat.

Lily looked up again at the window and shivered as a cold draught swept through the common room; she was frozen despite her sitting by the warm fire and being swaddled in at least 4 layers of clothing, including a hat and scarf. It didn't help that the old castle wasn't properly insulated, either, and the chill from every snowball that hit the window seeped into the room.

"Hey, Lily, are you coming out?" another Gryffindor girl her age called out, as a large group of first and second years made their way out of the portrait hole. Mary, her name was, although Lily had only really started to remember that well last week. She wasn't too close to any of the other girls – or boys – in her house, but she didn't mind too much.

Splat.

"No thanks, I'm alright." She smiled. Mary shrugged and gave her a little wave before hurrying after the rest of her friends. Lily wasn't really a social person; really, she normally preferred books over conversations.

Granting that it was Christmas Day, and it was snowing, Lily decided to take a break from her charms essay. She couldn't get any work done with the racket the snowballs were making, anyway.

Splat.

Well, while she was unfocused, she might as well try to socialise a little. It was a bit of a walk down to the Slytherin dungeons, but she didn't mind. It wasn't until she had got halfway there that she realised that she was going to completely the wrong place to find her friend, so she backtracked and headed up the next flight of stairs she found.

The library was, of course, quiet, but especially so due to the time of year. Not many of the students stayed at home for the holidays, and even fewer did work during them, choosing instead to cram it all into the last few days after New Year's.

Severus was easy to find, as usual, due to his characteristically long black hair and hunched back.

"Hi," she whispered when she had sat down opposite to him on the small table at the back of the room, his usual spot. Her best friend looked up at her, gave a weak smile, and then drew his attention back to his work, where he was scribbling away frantically in a book that Lily sincerely hoped didn't belong to the library. "Do you want to come outside?"

This was a first for her, volunteering to go outside; she usually preferred to stay inside in the relative warmth of the castle, leaving only for required lessons. It wasn't that she disliked the outside – on the contrary, she loved it – it was just that she had an extremely bad circulation. His reply was a mute shake of his head.

Seeing as she was already wrapped up in all of the clothes she could find, she decided not to waste the opportunity of snow – she rarely got it where she lived – and made her own way outside.

The bracing winter air hit her at full blast when she stepped outside, and she made her way down to the frozen lake, shivering fiercely.

Splat. A wet, cold, dripping ball of snow hit her right in the centre of her face. Whilst she had to appreciate the thrower's excellent aim, she wasn't happy. She was cold enough as it was!

Scouring her eyes around for the culprits, she found them quite easily. Well, it wasn't hard when they were standing a mere 20 metres away sniggering their heads off. She wagered that these were also the boys who had been throwing snowballs at the common room's window all morning.

"Oi!" she shouted over to them. Their laughing stopped abruptly as she made her way over to them; apparently, they hadn't thought that she'd actually confront them. Both boys looked to be in about her year, shorter than her that they were. Both had similar black hair, though whilst one's was easily thrown back in a ponytail, the other's was sticking in every which direction.

The messy haired boy had sparkling hazel eyes, and thin wire framed glasses that were a little too big for him, meaning he had to push them back up onto his nose every minute or so. He accompanied this with sweeping his hair of his face in one fell swoop, doing two actions with half the effort. His smirk was the widest, so, naturally, she assumed him to be the leader of the two.

The other boy, still chuckling to himself at the ginger's face when the snowball had made impact, nudged his friend. "Think we've got you a new admirer, James." He whispered to him.

Lily pulled herself up to her full height, where she presided a good 5 centimetres above the pair. She wasn't the tallest of people, but at least she was taller than them.

"James? Is that your name?" she sniffed. She realised that she probably sounded very snooty and posh, but the sniff was really just due to her runny nose. The boy didn't seem to care, however, and promptly stuck out his hand for her to shake.

"Yup, that's my name. He's Sirius Black, and I'm James Potter." He grinned at her.

"Well," she narrowed his eyes at his outstretched hand. "I hope I don't see any more of you, Potter. I'm going inside."

Second year

Splat.

Lily rolled her eyes and signed. Not again. Was this going to happen every year now, just when she sat down to do an essay?

Resignedly, she decided that she wouldn't even bother to attempt to get it done in here; it was only going to get louder when the other students came back from their annual snowball fight. Briefly, Lily contemplated what to do. She could go and see Severus, but she knew that he was even less cheerful than usual on Christmas, for reasons he had yet to explain to her. After running through her options carefully, she decided to simply take a walk around the castle while it was still quiet.

She had almost reached the entrance hall when she encountered a large pool of water blocking her way. Knowing that this was the quickest way to get there, by a long way, and she was wearing waterproof boots, she decided to just plough straight through it. Bad move.

The water solidified around her ankles and before she knew it, she was ankle deep in ice. Cursing herself for neglecting to bring her wand with her, she knelt down on the ice to examine it. It didn't seem like it had frozen naturally – well, she could tell that form the rate of freezing – a there were no air bubbles. She hastily stood up again, trying not to fall over, and glanced around for the people who had caused it.

Sure enough, the tell-tale snickers were soon heard from the fighting horse tapestry over to her left. Leaning a little back, she whipped open the hanging and glared at the four boys behind it.

"Okay, which one of you did this?" she accused, looking at each of them in turn. Not Peter Pettigrew, a stubby boy who could barely hold his wand the right way around. Not Remus Lupin, who although was clearly the cleverest out of the gang of four, didn't have the malice to do such a thing. Her eyes stopped when she saw Sirius Black and James Potter. Now she had to decide between the two.

"It was Jamie!" Sirius declared.

"No, it was Siri!" he argued jokingly back. How they had come up with those ridiculous nicknames, Lily did not know. However, it was pretty obvious to see who was to blame when she saw who was holding the wand.

"I – you-" she glared at the boy wearing the glasses. "Let me go!" She had to say, she was impressed with his transfiguration skills of such a large body of water, but she didn't think four ganging up on one was exactly fair. He smirked at her, his trademark smile.

"Okay," he shrugged, and with a flick of his wand, she was free. But not for long. Still unstable from her revealing them behind the tapestry, she tumbled forwards to land face first in the water, barely catching herself in time to stop herself from breaking her nose on the ground.

Slowly, she got up again, her new jumper and skirt drenched and her hair dripping. She scowled viciously at the boys, only Remus having the decency to look away guiltily, though Peter did look suitably abashed.

"Thanks, Potter."

Third year

Splat.

It was becoming a ritual for her now; sit down, start the essay, and stop as you put your quill to parchment. Lily sighed and started to roll up her work – next to her, Mary grinned.

"Can we go outside now?" she pestered her, as she had been doing for the last hour. "I don't want to waste Christmas and all of this snow sitting inside doing work!" Lily smiled at her best friend.

"Give me a minute," she ran upstairs to quickly grab her coat, fleece, gloves, scarf and hat before jumping down half of the stairs to meet Mary again. "Ready!"

The girls were some of the last to leave the common room, the rest of their house having ventured out into the snow sometime before lunch. It was only when they emerged from behind a tapestry – the secret passageway Lily had found last year when she was chasing the boys down for their prank – that they saw someone else.

"Severus!" Lily called out as they caught up with him. She grabbed his arm and pulled him around to look at her, grinning. He had a sour expression on his face, as usual, although it did brighten considerably when he saw her. That was, until he saw how she was dressed and the direction she was travelling.

"You know I hate the outdoors." He reminded her morosely. She rolled her eyes at her childhood friend.

"Come on, Sev, it'll be fun!" she insisted. Shrugging his shoulders, he reluctantly agreed and followed the girls as they made their way into the snow. Lily was being the in-between friend, trying to maintain a conversation with both Mary and Severus without neglecting the other. Mary wasn't too happy about a Slytherin being with them, and a greasy-haired one at that, but Lily was one of her only friends who had stayed for the holidays, so she didn't say anything.

Splat.

This time, the snowball wasn't aimed at Lily; instead, it hit Severus Snape right on the top of his black hair, as if it had fallen from above. Lily immediately whipped out her wand from her coat pocket, having learnt from last year's mistake that it was better to keep it with you at all times.

"Potter!" she yelled. She didn't even have to work out who it was anymore.

A messy black hear appeared a little to her left, the colours slowly seeping back into his skin as if he had been underneath a disillusionment charm. "You called?" he smirked.

Lily was briefly distracted by his reappearance, obviously not expecting him to be so close. "How did you do that?" she ordered. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Rude, Evans," he chastised her. She huffed at him. "And if you mean my stunning spell work, well-"

"Oi!" another voice cut him off. "My spell work, you mean?" Sirius Black's head appeared in the space next to James', grinning mischievously at the girls and studiously ignoring the Slytherin boy.

A cough sounded from their right. "You're saying the name 'Remus Lupin' wrong." Remus announced as he appeared before them.

"It was me!" Peter Pettigrew declared as he came to stand next to the boys from where he'd been hiding behind a large tree. At this, the boys could not hold in their laughter any longer.

"Nah, we're messing with you Evans," James snickered. He'd taken to calling her Evans shortly after she'd begun calling him Potter. It had been intended to be a mockery, but, of course, it had stuck. "Of course it was Moony." With his last word, Remus shot a sharp glance over to the speaker. Lily followed this interaction curiously; this was a new development.

"And why do you feel the need to torment people by charming snowballs to fly into people?" she accused him.

"It's Snivellus! Course we're gonna throw snowballs at him. It'll give his greasy hair a bit of a wash for once!" he laughed with Sirius. Lily glared at the pair.

"Don't be so horrible!" Mary told them. Remus looked vaguely surprised that Mary had that level of ferocity in her. Mary, who had never yelled at anyone in her life. Lily must have been rubbing off on her, what with all of the time she spent shouting at James and Sirius.

"Don't listen to them, Severus, let's go." Lily took her friends hand and they walked back up to the castle, Mary trailing close behind.

Splat.

Almost in the same second as the snowball hit her head, Lily whipped around and had pointed her wand at the boys. Their expressions were vaguely surprised, until James started laughing at her.

"You wouldn't dare, Evans," he scoffed. He wasn't laughing for long when his face started sprouting tentacles.

Forth year

"He doesn't want to see you."

"But he's my best friend!" Lily was currently stood outside the Slytherin common room, wet and cold from the dripping walls in the dungeons. A bulky fifth year boy was blocking her way in, and he wouldn't even give him a message. "Please!"

"Okay," he relented. She knew that she'd recognised him as one of the nicer Slytherins – and there weren't many of them. "I'll go and get him. Stay here."

Lily grinned to herself. She hadn't seen Severus for what felt like weeks – every time she tried to approach him he just seemed to vanish. But today, she decided to just put her foot down; it was Christmas, after all.

It seemed to take an age for Severus to arrive at the hole in the wall. When he did arrive, he didn't seem that happy.

"What are you doing here?" he almost hissed at her. Lily took a small step backwards, offended.

"I thought I'd come and see you. Maybe we could go for a walk?" she offered.

"I said to the boys that I'd stay here today." He explained, slightly more gently this time.

"Oh, okay. Can you at least stay for a little while to talk?"

"No." his answer was harsh and short, but she'd barely had time to acknowledge it before he'd stepped back and the stone wall had reformed over where his face had previously been.

Her feet kept walking away even though her brain had lost all rational thought. Was she losing her first friend, the one who had introduced her to this world, to some muggleborn hating Slytherins?

She sunk down against a wall, not really conscious of where she was. She didn't know how long she sat there, just engrossed in her own thoughts, but it wasn't until she heard someone else's footsteps that she snapped out of it.

"Evans?" of course it would be him. Lily slowly looked up, not bothering to even wipe her eyes to hide the tears leaking from them. She knew that her ginger hair was a mess and her face was red and puffy from crying, but at this moment she simply didn't care. She just wanted to be left alone.

"Are you alright?" he ventured, walking towards her before sitting down, his back to the wall opposite to her. She glared at him.

"What does it look like?" she spat. Not only did she look horrible, but there was no doubt that she had the worst luck in the world. This would have to be the person who found her; the very same person who had teased her every single year since they joined.

He was silent for a while. "Is there anything I can do to help?" while she appreciated his offer, she severely doubted that it was sincere.

"Leave me alone!" and before she knew it, she was shouting at him. Shouting out all of her angers and fears, everything she was afraid of all at once spewing out of her mouth in a mindless jumble. She couldn't stop once she'd started; there was so much that she just needed to let out.

When she had finished, both of them were standing up and staring at each other silently.

"Please," Lily whispered finally, using up the last of her finite energy. She was too tired to deal with James Potter. So she didn't protest when he gave her a single nod, and walked away, leaving her alone.

Fifth year

She'd missed the snow last year when she'd been wallowing in her own selfish pity. That was a bad time of her past, a day she always strongly regretted and tried to forget. It was the turning point in her friendship with Severus, and the day she had been horribly cruel to James, when for once he was actually being a genuinely kind person. She knew she'd hurt him; that was clear for everyone to see.

He seemed to give her a wide berth now, not going out of his way to especially humiliate her anymore, only smiling at her weakly in the corridors as if she would burst at any moment. She missed the old James, in an odd sort of way.

Anyway, this year, both Mary and Alice were staying at the castle for the holiday, and the three girls had decided to take a short stroll around the frozen lake to get their appetites up for the Christmas feast they would be gorging themselves on later on.

The snow was cold and crunchy beneath their feet, so they hurried on to quicken the walk.

Splat.

Of course. That was what she had missed last year. All three girls at once drew out their wands and whipped them around in a series of complicated manoeuvres that Lily had taught them a few days before. When they turned around, there were what appeared to be three snowman shaped lumps on the ground.

The girls burst out laughing, and Mary quickly ran over to melt out the boy on the right of the group.

"Remus!" she exclaimed. "Are you alright? I didn't realise how much the snow would actually form around you!" Remus Lupin stood up, laughing and dusting the snow off of his clothes.

"I'm fine!" he assured her, hugging her tightly to gain some of her warmth.

"Are you sure?" she asked worriedly, ever the concerned girlfriend. The two had started going out just at the end of the summer holidays, and they were almost inseparable. Although Lily agreed with Alice that they were indeed a perfect couple, she couldn't help but think saying she was in love already was going a little too fast. Not that she would say anything, of course; if Mary was happy, she was happy.

Lily giggled and walked up to the other two lumps of snow, and prodded one with her wand.

"Ouch! Stop molesting me, women." That was Sirius then. So, that only left the third snowman to be the infamous James Potter.

Eventually, once the boys had worked out how to unfreeze themselves, and Remus and Mary had snuck off to who knows where, that only left Lily, James and Remus. Strangely enough, Peter was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey, Prongs, fancy a snowball fight?" Sirius grinned.

"Do you really have to ask, Padfoot?" James replied. Lily didn't know where these nicknames had come from, but she had realised that the Marauders were not a logical group a long time ago.

"Wanna join in, Evans?" James offered. Rolling her eyes at the snickering pair, Lily gracefully declined and returned to the castle. Maybe she could finally finish that essay.

Splat.

Maybe not.

Sixth year

Splat.

Really? This was still going? Lily sighed and rolled up her essay for what felt like the hundredth time that day. The snowball fight had been going on and off all the morning, taking only a short break for lunch at midday.

Slowly accepting the fact that she would actually have to go outside into the cold if she were to ever be sociable, she donned her many layers of warm clothing and left the safety of the common room fire.

As it turned out, her friends – Marlene, Alice and Dorcas this year – had decided to go ice skating on the frozen lake. Although she was scared that the ice would break beneath her feet and she would plunge to a hideously cold death, she wasn't extremely adverse to the idea.

After transfiguring their shoes into ice skates, the girls all slowly ventured out onto the lake, lily being the last one. It was just the girls; Mary not being there for Remus and Lily having fallen out severely with both James and Severus. She didn't think she'd forgive either of them, after what they'd said to her. Of course, she couldn't say the future.

"Hey, Lils, get out here!" Marlene called over to her from the middle of the lake, skating backwards as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Dorcas beckoned to her and winked before showing off with a fancy pirouette. Lily scowled at the both of them, and grabbed Alice's arm shakily.

It was a slow circle of the lake for the both of them, it being their first time. The wolf whistles were numerous however, and Lily and Alice giggled their way around the lake. They'd almost completed the circuit when they met Sirius standing at the edge of the frozen water.

"Hello, ladies." he smirked. Lily eyed him suspiciously; both of his hands were held behind his back.

"Alice, I-" she began, but-

Splat.

Lily and Alice lost their balance, and collapsed in a heap on the lake, laughing loudly.

"Merry Christmas, Sirius!" they called back.

Seventh year

"Can you believe that this is our last Christmas here, James?" Lily asked, leaning her head onto James' shoulder. She also couldn't believe how close she'd got to the Marauders in the last year, either. It was curious how much difference a year could make.

"Yes," he replied, swinging an arm around her. "I just can't believe you called me James." he grinned.

"Well, I'm coming around about you," she smirked. "And I think you're influencing me."

"How so?" he asked.

Splat.