Lily was arguing under her breath with Snape, and they were crossing the courtyard. They were now in their fifth year. They had managed to maintain their friendship, but Lily wasn't able to see how they could stay friends for much longer. They were drifting apart, and going their own separate ways.

"I thought we were supposed to be friends? Best friends?" Snape said.

"We are Sev," Lily said, "but I don't like the people you're hanging out with! I'm sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him Sev? He's creepy! D'you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?"

Lily leaned against a pillar now, and she looked up into the sallow face that belonged to Snape.

"That was nothing," Snape said. "It was a laugh, that's all -"

"It was Dark Magic, and if you think that's funny -"

"What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?" Snape demanded. He was unable to hold in his resentment for James, Sirius and Remus... and to a lesser extent Peter Pettigrew, and colour rose into his cheeks.

"What's Potter got to do with anything?" Lily asked, her tone turning cold.

"They sneak out at night. There's something weird about that Lupin. Where does he keep going?"

"He's ill," Lily said. "They say he's ill -"

"Every month at the full moon?" Snape asked sceptically.

"I know your theory," said Lily in the same tone as before. "Why are you so obsessed with them, anyway? Why do you care what they're doing at night?"

"I'm just trying to show you they're not as wonderful as everyone seems to think they are."

Lily blushed under the intensity of his gaze.

"They don't use Dark Magic, though," she said, dropping her gaze. "And you're being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow and James Potter saved you from whatever's down there -"

Snape's face contorted with rage. "Saved? Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends' too! You're not going to – I won't let you -"

"Let me? Let me?" she asked, finally losing her temper, her emerald eyes turning to slits. Snape changed his tact.

"I didn't mean – I just don't want to see you made a fool of – he fancies you, James Potter fancies you!" Lily, taken aback, knew that Snape had not wanted to say that.

"And he's not... Everyone thinks... Big Quidditch hero -" By now Snape was riddled with bitterness, dislike, and hate, and this combination was making him babble. Lily's eyebrows travelled further into her hair.

"I know James Potter's an arrogant toerag," she said, cutting across Snape's babbling. "I don't need you to tell me that. But Mulciber and Avery's idea of humour is just evil. Evil, Sev. I don't understand how you can be friends with them."

Lily looked at Snape, and doubted he had heard what she had said about Mulciber and Avery, and rolled her eyes. Of course, he would only listen to anything she said if it had something to do with insulting Potter. There was a spring in his step as they walked away, but Lily wasn't paying attention. She was thinking about what Severus had said about Remus.

Of the group that had dubbed themselves 'The Marauders', Lily was closest to Remus, the shy boy that disappeared every month. Lily had been friends with him since the sorting in first year, but they weren't very close friends. If they were up in the Gryffindor common room, and Remus' friends were being idiots, and Lily's friends were talking about some hot bass player for some new band, they would always talk to each other. And they had both been made prefects this year, so they were required to talk to each other during patrols.

She couldn't bear to think that maybe Remus was as Severus suggested. Could he have been bitten by a werewolf as a child? He probably could have, and if that was true, he'd probably been a werewolf for as long as he could remember. And it surely wouldn't have been his fault. You can't really choose if you're going to be a werewolf.

"You okay Evans?" somebody asked, snapping her out of her thoughts. She was sitting in the common room in the chair nearest the fire.

"Oh what do you want, Potter?" she asked.

"Youch," he said. "Just asking how you were."

"I'm not having a very good day," she said. "Sev's being a bit insolent lately."

"Sniv, being a bit insolent?" James snorted.

"See, this is why I don't talk to you," Lily said, glaring at him and gathering up her things. "I'll see you in class tomorrow Potter."

He cursed to himself as he saw Lily stalk up the stairs to her dorm.

**

"Did you like question ten, Moony?" Lily heard Sirius ask as they entered the entrance hall after their Defence Against the Dark Arts theory OWL.

"Loved it," Remus said briskly. "Give five signs that identify the werewolf. Excellent question."

"D'you think you managed to get all the signs?" James asked, mocking concern.

"Think I did," he said serioulsy. Lily, intrigued, listened intently to this conversation instead of listening to what Alice Prewett was trying to say to her.

"One: he's sitting on my chair. Two: he's wearing my clothes. Three: his name's Remus Lupin."

Lily paused. So Severus had been right, and she'd ignored him. Well, she wasn't going to give him that satisfaction just yet. At Remus' comments, the Marauder's all laughed, except for Peter, who was worried about getting the question wrong.

Lily didn't hear the rest of the conversation. She went out into the grounds with Alice and Mary and sat beneath one of the large beech trees that littered the grounds. Snape however, followed the four friends, but Lily noticed that he was too engrossed in the exam paper to realise what they were talking about.

Lily and Alice were almost finished going through the test when some loud noises reached Lily's ears. She looked in the direction they were coming from and anger reached her cheeks, threatening to take over. James Potter and Sirius Black were duelling with Severus, and students were gathering around them to look watch this exchange.

Lily got up and ran towards the boys at the lake. "Leave hiim ALONE!" Lily yelled, but James had already used a scrubbing charm on Severus' mouth. James and Sirius both turned around to see who had called to them, and James, on seeing that it was her, put his hand to his hair and messed it up a little bit.

"All right, Evans?" asked James, and he sounded like a mature man, something Lily knew he wasn't.

"Leave him alone," Lily snarled. "What's he done to you?"

"Well," said James, stretching out his words as much as he could, "it's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean..."

Many of the students surrounding them laughed, but Lily and Remus didn't.

"You think you're funny," Lily said, her voice as cold as ice, and James knew she was angry now. "But you're just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone."

James got a sly smile on his face. "I will if you go out with me, Evans," he said. "Go on... go out with me and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again."

Lily noticed the Impediment Jinx that Sirius had cast was wearing off, and Severus was beginning to inch towards his wand.

"I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid," Lily snapped, glaring at him.

"Bad luck Prongs," Sirius said, patting his friend on the back. "OI!" he called, noticing that the jinx was wearing off.

Snape pointed his wand straight at James, and a gash appeared on the side of James' face, spattering his robes with blood. James whirled around, clutching the gash, and he pointed his wand at Snape. A second later, Snape was hanging upside down in the air, his face covered up by the robes that fell over his head, revealing skinny legs and greying underwear.

Sirius, James and Peter roared with laughter, many people in the crowd cheered, and Lily had to stop herself from laughing a little bit. "Let him down!" she said to James, trying to sound angry, but failing miserably.

"Certainly," James said, flicking his wand and letting Snape fall into a heap on the ground. Snape found his way to the top of his robes and got up, wand pointing at James.

"Petrificus Totalus," Sirius yelled, pointing his wand at Snape.

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" Lily shouted, this time achieving anger. Her wand was pointing at James, and she had no recollection of having pulled it out.

"Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you," James said in earnest.

"Take the curse off him then!"

James sighed and then muttered the counter-curse, releasing Snape. "There you go," James said, watching Snape struggle to his feet. "You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus -"

"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods liker her!" Snape blurted out.

"Fine," Lily said, her eyes going red. "I won't bother in future. And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus."

She felt guitly for that. That was the first time she had ever called him 'Snivellus'.

"Apologise to Evans!" James said to Snape, keeping his wand trained on the form of the sallow skinned boy.

"I don't want you to make him apologise," Lily shouted, her wand pointing back to James. "You're as bad as he is!"

"What?" James yelped. "I'd NEVER call you a – you-know-what!"

Lily rolled her eyes at the pathetic boy in front of her. "Messing up your hair just because you think it looks cool to look like you'e just got off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can – I'm surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK!"

And with that, Lily ran back up to the castle, all the way to the common room, and her dormitory, and when she got there, she jumped onto her bed, put her face in her pillow and cried.

**

"Lily?" Mary Macdonald asked. She spotted Lily lying on her bed, her face buried in her pillow. "Lily, Snape's outside the portrait hole and wants to talk to you."

"Snape can go get stuffed," she said.

"He said he'd sleep there if you didn't go down and talk to him."

Lily sat up and rubbed her eyes. They were red from the many tears that she had cried in the last three hours, and she knew that rubbing them wasn't going to help. She sighed, got into her pajama's, and then went downstairs to the portrait hole.

"What do you want?" she asked when she saw Snape's form.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I'm not interested," she said, really not interested.

"I'm sorry!" he tried again.

"Save your breath," Lily said, throwing up her arms. "I only came out because Mary told me hat you were threatening to sleep here."

"I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just -"

"Slipped out?" Lily asked, her voice absent of pity. "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends – you see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"

She watched as Snape opened his mouth, and then closed it again without speaking.

"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

"No – listen, I didn't mean -"

"- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?"

Snape struggled to say something that had obviously been on his mind for a while, but he didn't get it out in time. Lily turned on her heel and entered the common room, leaving Snape out in the corridor.

"Lily, are you okay?" somebody asked. She looked up to see Remus coming over.

"I'm fine," she lied, and this was blatantly obvious to anyone who could see her.

"You know, sometimes, life hands you lemons. You know what you do with those lemons? Make apple juice, and then watch the muggle population wonder how you did it."

Lily had to laugh at that, and she knew that Remus would know this from experience. She looked into the brown eyes of her friend, and knew that he was a caring and generous peron, that being a werewolf was no fault of his, and that it didn't change who he was inside. She smiled at him.

"Thank you Remus," she said. "I think you're right."

"Of course I am," he said. "I'm Remus Lupin."

Lily said goodnight to him and went up to her dormitory. She drew the curtains of her four poster bed, and she fell asleep, thinking about all the things she had done with Severus. They meant nothing now. They were no longer friends. And starting tomorrow, she would have to start talking to the arrogant toerag named James Potter again. Oh, what a life had she.


Okay, so this is my first Marauder era-story. I have read many, and found they tend to dominate my favourites.

So, in the first chapter, I realise that in the Seventh book it has the Evans family ON the Platform. I thought, no, I need James to see her somewhere else, so I changed it. Sorry to everyone who picked that up.

And I checked my traffic: I put this story up 24 hours ago, and in that time, it had 82 visitors!!! WOW!!!

Special thanks to the reviewers of the first chapter, and they are: Pigtails (or Luna/RaindropsOnTheRooftop), oHmYgOdNoWaY (nice name btw), BettyCrocker and Hikari-and-Akari.

And thanks to Pigtails for picking up my error... thanks muchly, see you tomorrow =]..

I hoped you like this chapter!! And I hope you review it, because I so would, but I already reviewed one of my other stories and I thought, 'well, I'm not doing that again, because that makes me look big-headed and retarded at the same time'...

Hang out for the next chapter, it should be more original stuff... this chappie was sort of copied from OOTP and DH, but from different POV's.

Please review,

Love Gabi xx