"WHAT DID YOU DO!" She roared at him, "You hit him! You hit him!" Her voice grew more shrilly by the more steps she took toward him. His hands were shoved in his pockets, his nose in the air.

"He touched you, so I touched him," He said, and a large grin erupted to his cheeks, "I was just taking your advice; Following his influence." Lily's shrilly mouth dropped into a numb face. She saw the triumphal expression on his face, and she choked. She realized, at that moment, that he won. The whole point of this summer, the whole reason she let him stay, was completely wasteful. He was right, and now for the rest of her life he'll never let her live it down. It was too much.

"You-You-" But before she could finish, before she could collect her words or realize which wave of pain was hitting her more, she collapsed beneath her knees. Her cries were silent, like her silent waves of pain. After months of them crashing on here, pulling back, and hitting her again like an aggressive ocean, she couldn't take it. She wanted James to leave; He got what he wanted. He broke her. But instead, she heard his weight fall down next to her, and despite how much she thought he hated her, or how much he actually really did, he let her cry on him for what seemed like forever.

Three Months Earlier

"TAKE THIS, EVIL BABOOZING DRAGON!" Lily roared as she bounced against sand toward the evil dragon, with the head of Petunia. She was in the Sahara desert, finishing a quest that Professor Dumbledore assigned to her- severing a dragon head. The dragon opened its mouth wide, and she was expecting a screeching sound of pain, when instead she heard beeping. Loud beeping. What in the merlin was beeping?

She felt her heavy eyes open slowly, acknowledging that unfortunately, that was just a dream. No cutting off a Petunia-modeled head, no glory filling her veins, no Dumbledore appointing her to do something amazing. Instead, a beeping ring had interrupted it, like something always did whenever anything good happened to her. She rolled to her other side, still memorizing the ringing in her ears. She buried her ears under the pillow, in an attempt to get away from it, but then she started to notice something.

The ringing wasn't going away. Why, in merlin, wasn't the ringing stopping? She then realized it was a real bell that woke her up. Her bloody door bell. What moron could be ringing her doorbell this early in the morning? God knows what would happen if Petunia was here right now. She would rip off her head for being awoken with a doorbell, obviously blaming it on her. God, she just wanted to go to sleep.

"Lucy..." Lily moaned to the girl sleeping next to her, "Open it, and whoever did it, don't forget to castrate them."

"It's your house," Lucy growled at her moodily. Lily bolted up angrily, slamming the pillow next to her, and swinging her door open to go murder whoever was moronic enough to ring her doorbell this early in the morning.

"It better be somebody dying," She said to herself as she stomped down the hallway. The closer she got to the ringing, the louder she heard three voices.

"Come on..." She heard somebody say above the ringing, "...It's two in the morning, do you wanther to rip off your head?" Hah! She liked that person. Maybe she would make their death quick.

"Nah, she deserves it for all the crap she did to us this year," A cackled-like voice said loudly, "Anyways, we need something to entertain us while we are here, don't we?" Her feet banged against the stairs.

"Hey, I think she's-"

She slammed the front door open, "CAN YOU STOP RINGING MY BLOODY DOORB-" But then she was silenced. She blinked, closed her eyes for a small impatient moment, and then reopened them in horror. No. No, no, no.

At first her mouth was wide open. She couldn't believe her eyes. She never thought he'd go this far. No, not this far. Maybe send her a letter or two to freak her out, but this? Then the shock vanished from her face, and all she could concentrate was the loud grinding of her teeth.

"James Potter...Don't tell me this is you."

She wanted to tell herself that the crazy-black-haired boy standing in front of her, lanky and skinny, was just a hallucination. Did Petunia put something in her drink at dinner, before storming out angrily the past afternoon? Did she take too many Benadryls for that banging headache of hers when Vernon Durky (Or was it Dursley?) made a comment about her ("ugly") mother?

But he was grinning too widely for this to be a hallucination.

"'Ello, Lils. I was just in the neighborhood when-"

"I AM GOING TO MURDER YOU! HOW DID YOU GET HERE? DID YOU FOLLOW ME HOME? GET OUT! GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT," She was aware that Lucy appeared behind her, touching her shoulder to calm down but she couldn't hold it in, "YOU STUPID IDOIT! THIS WAS TOO FAR, POTTER! WAY, WAY WAYTOO FAR!-"

"Lily, calm down," Lucy hissed, but she kept going.

"IF YOU DONT LEAVE THIS PROPERTY IN TWENTY SECONDS I WILL SHOW YOU WHAT A GUN IS, POTTER, AND HOW TO USE IT!" She took a cold breath, waiting for Potter's facial expression to change, but it didn't.

"I didn't follow you home. I just wanted to greet my new mate," He told her, and she noticed a dark shadow behind him shaking his head, "And don't worry, I know what a gun is. Funny object, isn't it?" Lily was silent. Too silent.

"Er, look," Lucy butt in, "It's really not the time. Maybe come back tomorrow? If you stay out here for too long the wholeneighborhood will wake up and-"

"What do you mean, 'new mate'?" Lily asked him slowly. Potter's grin lit up proudly.

"Well, I heard you got Head Girl, and since I got Head Boy-"

"You got head boy?" There was a tight silence. During that time she finally realized that Remus Lupin was the one behind him, and Sirius Black, invisible for the first time in his life, was leaning against her porch.

"Yes," Potter told her, "Amazing isn't it?" Her face drained, and she could feel her fingers dig into the door henge.

"Lily? Are you okay?" A distant voice said. She, for a second, thought she was about to throw up. But, a voice interrupted into her head, it was James Pottersaying that. He was probably lying.

"I," She said, her teeth clenched, "am going to bed, and when I wake up, I'm going to pretend this whole thing was a nightmare." She slammed the door in their faces before she could think about it a second time.

"Can we stay at your house?" She heard a voice past the door say, "We don't exactly have anywhere to sleep, you see, Padfoot-" But she was already up the stairs, far away from her pity.