Lily hated packing. She had to pack all her things, and she hated it. No amount of Wingardium Leviosa's could do the job for her, so she was stuck taking each object one by one and stuffing it into its respective box. She'd thrown away quite a few items by now, and had most of it packed, but she was leaving in two days to move into an apartment with Alice, and needed to finish soon. She hadn't even bothered mentioning the idea of living with James. No way would her parents like that, despite her having shared a dorm with him all year. Not that she minded living with Alice. It was just that she already knew how to live with James, and now she would have to re-learn how to live with someone.

So here she was, packing her things, long red hair tied into a messy ponytail, wand stuck in her pocket, and trying to not break a lightbulb. Eventually, she gave up the safe packing of the breakable item and put a charm on it, placing in between the taken-apart pieces of the lamp it belonged to. Exhausted and hungry for lunch, she sat down on her bed. Maybe she could get James to go someplace.

She pulled a small mirror off her dresser, stared into, watching her own reflection. It was, as of now, her best way to contact James, and also the gift he'd given her for her eighteenth birthday last week. She rubbed her hand over it, marveling again at the simple fact that there were no fingerprints. A moment later, James' face appeared.

"Can't talk now, Sirius is-" He was cut off as large water balloon was hurtled toward him, wetting his hair and dripping down the mirror. "Pelting me with those things. Will you try not to break my mirror?!" he yelled, and Sirius' response faded as James tucked the mirror into the safety of his pocket.

Lily laughed. She'd already seen - and participated in - one of Sirius' water fights, and didn't blame James for not letting her talk. Apparently, there was a very affective and probably illegal water balloon charm Sirius knew and refused to share.

Resigned to waiting for James, Lily went back to packing. She'd already packed most of what she wanted, save a few photographs that were reserved for the top of the boxes, the safest place to pack them. Lily hunted around the room for anything she'd missed, and moved her dresser from the wall just to be sure.

A crumpled piece of paper had been wedged in the small space. Lily picked it up, careful. It was a drawing. She'd tried to throw it away, in the summer after fifth year, no doubt. She'd gone on a tirad, throwing away and smashing whatever he'd given her, till none of it was left. She must have missed the waste basket with this one. For some reason, she hadn't ripped it. And now she was left with the last survivor of a long-dead, massacre of a friendship. And for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to throw it away.

The too bright green eyes stared back at her, the drawing looking a lot less proportionate than she remembered it. When he gave it to her, she thought it was the best drawing ever, better than anything she'd ever drawn, better, even, than Petunia, who was quite older and more experienced at the proper use of coloured pencil and crayon. The hair was really just a hair-shaped blob, lacking vertical lines for texture. The eyelashes stuck up to much, the eyes themselves were rather large, and the lips weren't symmetrical. But yet, she couldn't throw it away.

So she packed it, tucking it beside the lamp, hidden from view. And though she didn't know it at the time, she never threw it away. Even when she was married, she kept it in the pocket of a coat she never wore, and it was buried in her ruined house, between a fallen bed table and broken floorboards.