Author's Note: This is my first ever fanfiction, but I have written original pieces of work so it is not my first time writing. I have read multiple "how Lily and James finally got together" fanfics and they were great but not quite what I had in mind, and this idea has been kicking around in my head for a really long time, so I figured I would throw it out here in case anyone felt like joining me for the journey. As a side note, it is my intent to remain as canon as possible, but forgive me for the lapse in who Lily's female friends were; J. K. unfortunately has not released any information regarding them so I used people who could have been in school with her, but weren't necessarily, rather than making up entirely new people who never existed at all in the HP universe. Also, I wrote this on my iPad, so if there are still any typos that I missed after the three proofreads I gave it, please just let me know! I hope you enjoy!

Chapter 1

Lily Evans stormed through the castle, making it to the seventh floor and Gryffindor Tower in record time. Angry tears rolls down her cheeks as she nearly flew up the stairs to the girls' dormitories. She knew one thing for certain: when the mad left, hurt was going to pummel her.

With that in mind, she was extremely glad to find her dorm-mates and friends Marlene McKinnon and Emmeline Vance reclining on their beds. Marlene jerked up from her relaxed sprawl as she took in Lily's expression.

"What happened this time?" Emmeline said after she glanced at Lily as she twirled a lock of straight brown hair around a finger. She was far too used to Lily being in tears, whether because Snape was being, well, himself, or because the Marauders were being prats again. Emmeline was still too stuck in her daydream to notice the difference between all those other times and now.

"It's-" Lily began then choked on a sob. "He-" she tried again but failed, putting a hand over her mouth to try to stifle the cries and wrapping her other hand around her middle as though she was trying to hold herself together.

Marlene, whose bed was nearest the door anyways, grabbed Lily's wrist and pulled her onto the bed. Marlene leaned back against her headboard with the redhead clinging to her, finally breaking down into heaving sobs as the heartache overtook the blinding anger that had been keeping her moving.

"Shh...shh..." Marlene kept repeating.

Emmeline finally fully refocused from her daydreaming enough to realize that this was worse, that this was something new and bigger. She immediately rushed to the blonde's bed to help comfort the distraught Lily.

"What's wrong, Lovely?" Emmeline asked again, more sincerely, once Lily's sobs had quieted down somewhat.

"I didn't think he could ever hurt me like this," Lily finally answered in a hoarse voice.

"Potter?" Marlene asked, confused. None of Lily's friends actually used James' name in her company unless they wanted a lecture about how immature the 'arrogant toe-rag' was and how they shouldn't speak to him or Sirius Black, let alone be friends with either of them.

When Lily shook her head, both the other girls sighed. Lily's fights with Severus Snape had been happening more and more frequently for the past year and a half. Neither the blonde nor the brunette could understand the redhead's continued friendship with the darkarts-obsessed Slytherin anyways, so it kept getting harder to console Lily when she fought with him.

Emmeline ran a hand soothingly up and down Lily's back as she said, "Don't worry, Snape will come around. He always does, right?" And it was true, he always did come crawling back, begging forgiveness.

Lily shook her head vehemently.

"No, I don't want him to. Not this time," Lily said with conviction.

Her friends' eyes widened at her declaration. This was turning into a day full of new occurrences.

"Wait, Lily, now you're going to have to explain," Marlene said. "I thought you said you and Severus were always going to be best mates. That's what you told us over and over, at least."

"I never thought he'd actually sink so low," Lily answered quietly. She took a deep breath before telling them what had happened.

"...And so I just wanted to help my friend, is all. The group of them are arrogant berks, and Sev had lost his wand, and so I tell off those two stupid Marauders, and what do I get in return? He-" She had to pause before she continued. It still hurt, but the mad was coming back, pushing her to tell it all. "He called me a...Mudblood." She spat the last word out.

Emmeline's jaw dropped open, not shocked that he used the term, since she had heard him use it plenty, but very shocked that he called Lily one. In Emmeline's eyes, it was easy to see that Snape loved Lily.

Marlene, however, got to her feet so quickly she tumbled Lily right to floor. Lily glared at her best female friend as she rubbed her bum and gingerly stood back up.

"He did WHAT!?" Marlene yelled angrily, snatching up her wand, which was laying on her nightstand. The blonde almost had as bad a temper as Lily. "I'm going to kill him!"

Marlene started marching to the door, but Lily's hand on her arm halted her.

"Please don't," Lily begged her friend. "I just want to move on." She rubbed at her itchy, red eyes. She knew she looked like a mess: eyes red and puffy, hair a tangled mess, skin blotchy. She did not cry prettily. "I just want to stay here, eat some chocolate, and relax. You with me?"

Marlene sighed but sat back down on her bed next to Emmeline. The two looked at each other and nodded. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Marlene waved her wand, summoning some of her and Lily's not-so-secret stash of chocolate from their trunks. Emmeline, not having her wand on her, just walked over to her trunk and pulled out some of her stash from the bottom of it.

Two hours later saw Lily feeling much more optimistic about the whole situation. If Severus was going to call other muggleborns Mudblood, then there was really no point in him treating her any differently from then on. He just couldn't see what was wrong with the Death Eater mentality, no matter how many times Lily had tried to explain how horrible they were. She was still angry and hurt, but she was working on reaching the point where she was okay with not being friends with her first wizard friend anymore.

At least, that was her mentality until Mary McDonald, their other brunette dorm-mate, shoved the dormitory door open and slammed it closed again. The other three girls exchanged confused glances. Mary was usually the most level-headed, even-tempered of the four girls.

"What happened with you then?" Emmeline asked from her spot on her own bed. She was wondering what else could possibly gone wrong this day. Lily was with Emmeline on her bed, while Marlene had gone back to sprawling on her own bed.

Mary huffed as she threw herself face-down on her bed. She mumbled something but none of the other girls could understand.

"Ah, I get it. It's all so clear now," Lily said sarcastically.

Mary turned her head and shoved her short, dark brown hair out of her face. She sighed again, dreading telling this to Lily, who finally looked mostly normal and not as though she'd been crying for an hour. Mary had witnessed what had happened down by the lake, and it wasn't like the whole school didn't know about what had happened already, but if Lily had gone to dinner puffy-faced and red-eyed it would not have ended well for her, mostly because of her damn pride. After all, you can only hear "I told you so" so many times before you snapped.

"He's waiting outside the portrait hole to try to talk to you," Mary finally told Lily, pulling herself into a sitting position as she did so.

Lily froze.

She couldn't take a breath and she was fairly certain her heart skipped at least one beat. Emmeline and Marlene gave Mary reproachful looks. After all, they had just gotten their friend back to a more-happy-than-sad place.

"You know what, Lovely?" Mary said, using the first half of the nickname Slughorn had given her: Lovely Lily. "I'll just go back out there and tell Snape to bugger off. Again."

Lily shook her head, jumping to her feet as she regained the living qualities of breathing and movement. "No, I need to talk to him. To tell him it's over."

"It's like you're breaking up with him," Marlene muttered.

Lily glared at her blonde friend. "I might as well be. I am breaking the friendship, so it is breaking up, in a sense."

With that said, she checked to make sure her wand was still tucked into her school uniform skirt's waistline and then walked calmly out of the dormitory. Lily knew in general what Severus would want to say. He would try to apologize, say he didn't mean it, that she was his best friend, and it wouldn't happen again. And maybe it wouldn't this time, but Lily was thoroughly sick of making excuses for Severus to her friends. This was just the last, worst straw on the proverbial camel's back.

As Lily reached the base of the staircase, she scanned the room to assure herself that the Marauders were not in the Common Room. The only decent one of the group was Remus, and then only when he wasn't in Potter's or Black's company. They tended to stay outside when the weather was nice enough though, preferring to sit under "their beach tree," as Sirius as dubbed it. Poor tree. This journey of Lily's through the Common Room was much better than her last. She still braced herself before pushing open the portrait and climbing through the hole.

"Lily! Thank Merlin! I knew you'd come out for me, no matter what that other girl said." Severus' onslaught on words began as soon as both her feet hit the floor of the corridor. His black hair fell in curtains around his face, framing his almost perfectly black eyes. His face, which had been drawn down with worry, was now lifted in a relieved smile.

Severus hurried towards Lily, reaching for her hand. The mask of relief he wore froze and then fell as Lily turned to keep her hand out of his reach. He finally took in her appearance, her expression. To anyone else, she would just look indifferent, but Severus had known her since they were nine. Her emerald green eyes, which usually glowed with her happy inner light, were still a little too watery and just the slightest bit bloodshot. She had cried recently, which he wasn't surprised about, but Lily's face had the barest hint of anger as well, and resignation. It was that last emotion that scared him the most.

"I'm sorry Lily. I really, truly am. You know I didn't mean to..." Severus trailed off when Lily put her hand up, palm towards him.

"You are always sorry, Severus," she began after a moment of silence. When she used his full name, it felt like a knife in his gut. "You always say you don't mean it, but you keep doing these things... Actions are more telling than words."

Severus took a step back, adding a physical distance to the emotional one Lily had already created for herself.

"I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just-"

"Slipped out?" Lily said coldly, cutting him off mid-sentence. "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years." Lily felt tears building behind her eyes again. She could have sworn she was all out of them. This was just so hard. "None of my friends understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends..." She had to pause and take a breath before she broke down. She had to finish this, no matter how much the broken look on her ex-best friend's face was killing her. "You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

Severus felt like he was stuck in his worst nightmare. Bt he refused to cry. Crying was weakness, and he refused to be weak.

"You know I would never hurt you, right?" Snape asked. When she nodded, he continued, "Then why do you think I would purposely call you that?"

There was a scuffle near the end of the hallway. Lily as hoping someone would turn down this corridor so she could finally end this painful conversation, but after a moment of the ex-friends watching the turn Snape turned back to face Lily, still waiting for her answer.

Lily just sighed and asked a question to which she unfortunately knew the answer. "Are you still planning to join Voldemort's-" Snape flinched at the name. "-Death Eater ranks after you leave Hogwarts?" He stayed silent and dropped his eyes, gazing at the floor. "That's what I thought. You just don't get what is wrong with them at all. Until you want nothing to do with them, we are through, Snape."

Severus' head snapped back up, his dark eyes wide and his mouth fallen slightly open in horror. He'd been lowered to the level of Potter and Black in Lily's mind.

"But Lily..." He stopped himself.

She had on her most stubborn, determined look. Here teeth were clenched, chin jutting ever-so-slightly forward, her eyebrows drawn down in a line over her beautiful almond-shaped green eyes. Those eyes usually were open and warm to him, but not anymore.

And then Severus did the hardest, most painful thing he had ever had to do: he gave up Lily Evans. With his back to her and a wave of his hand as he walked away he said, "See you around, Evans."

He heard her mutter something, and it must have been the password because a moment later he heard her climb through the portrait hole. Snape refused to turn and watch her go. He had suffered through enough pain already that day.

"Nice screw up, Snivellus," came the familiar drawl of James Potter once Snape had reached the end of the corridor. James was casually leaning against the wall, arms and ankles crossed. "Really, it was brilliant." The arrogant prat had the gall to start clapping his hands together as sarcastically as clapping can get.

Severus lifted a lip at him in a sneer. "Potter," he practically spat the name out, automatically pulling his wand out. "This is entirely your fault!"

James, with his eternally messy black hair and hazel eyes, didn't bother getting out his wand. For once, he was alone, having opted against a trip to the kitchens with his mates.

"That's funny," James responded as he pushed himself off the wall, "because it sounded to me like it was inevitable. All that Death Eater business is pretty lethal for a friendship with a muggleborn."

James sauntered around Severus to access Gryffindor Tower when he was stopped by his nemesis speaking.

"If you hurt her Potter, I will kill you," Snape promised, ending with, "Keep her safe." And then he hurried away.

James watched him leave with a curious expression on his face. It wasn't like James was even friends with Lily to be able to hurt her like the other boy had, and he was fairly certain Lily would hurt him if he tried protecting her in any way. He just shrugged it off for the time being and made his way through the portrait hole to wait in his favorite armchair by the fireplace for the rest of the Marauders to return.