1989

She got her wish this year. His arms circle her shivering form, and despite the fact that he's creating puddles on the floor, Lily leans into his embrace. His arms are there this year- but he doesn't tell her that it was a dream.

Because everything is so so so real.

James, why did you come back?

Why?

Why did you come back, James?

And Lily knows that now she's in for one hell of a journey.

And then it hits her.

James.

Is.

Back.

The same James that left her to deal with his mess, his crying mother, his heartbroken father.

She could still picture the look on Fleamont's face- asking, did you drive him away? Were you the one to make us lose our only son? Lily still isn't on good terms with the Potters, and it was ALL BECAUSE OF HIM!

With a cry, Lily pushes herself out of James's arms. What is she doing? This is the man that made her miserable for years, that ruined her life, her only chance of happiness. For god's sake, she has a husband now!

"Lily?" There is a questioning note in James's voice, and lightning illuminates the living room once again.

Lily stands up, and dusts off her clothing. She's trembling with fury- she can't believe the gall of it all.

"Get out." Lily says. "Get out of my house."

James is still sitting on the floor, a puddle around him. He looks very lost, and Lily feels a pang of pity. She quickly pushes it away, and stays strong.

"I...what?"

"How dare you come back here." Lily says, quietly. "How dare you actually walk through the door, and have the audacity to...to touch me!" Lily can still feel a few tears sliding down her face.

James hugs himself, and Lily notices that his lips are blue. It is November after all. Lily freezes- and grabs a blanket off the sofa, and drops it unceremoniously on his head.

"There you go." She says, grumpily.

"What about a warming charm?" James says, hopefully. "Or maybe just a drying charm-"

Lily silences him with a scornful look, and then grabs her wand which is lying on the floor. She waves her wand, and a silencing charm envelops the room. She knows that though her husband is a notoriously sound sleeper, she is sure that there will be even more yelling- and not even he can sleep through whatever fury Lily will unleash upon James Potter.

"Stay here." She commands. Lily then stomps over to the floo, and grabs some of the sparkly green powder.

"Black Manor!" She shouts, and steps through quickly.

"Sirius!" She yells. "Sirius, get your furry ass down here!" Lily shakes her head and lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. "This'll probably kill you!" She glances at the house around her, sighing slightly. Sirius's house is rather extravagant, if not slightly over the top, but Lily has good memories in this slightly pompous manor that Sirius purchased when he was twenty.

There's a bounding on the stairs, and Lily groans. "Max, go back to sleep." She really doesn't want to deal with the little boy at the moment. He has the most horrible penchant of getting Lily into the worst situations.

"But I want to see!" A little boy of five is standing on the bottom stair, his messy black hair hanging into his sleepy eyes. "And Daddy might be….indisposed at the moment." He grins mischievously. Lily rolls his eyes, knowing that most likely another one of Max's pranks was currently the thing that Sirius was indisposed because of.

"Max, go tell your father to get down here right now. And what are you doing up? It's two o'clock in the morning!"

"I'm not tired Aunt Lily…."

"Tell him Prongs is back." Lily decides to get straight to the point.

Max eyes Lily curiously. "Prongs? Who's that?"

Lily grimaces. Sirius refuses to talk of James, saying that the James that abandoned Lily and his parents wasn't the James he used to know. Therefore, his own five year old son, who was probably going to become the next terror of Hogwarts, didn't even know the name 'Prongs'. Sirius referred to his once-best friend as 'the other one'. It could prove to be very awkward sometimes, especially when Max enquired after the name of the famous 'other one'.

"Just tell him 'Prongs-Is-Back." Lily stats firmly. She ignores the slight skip in the beat of her heart when she finally registers the sentence she just told Max. She can still feel the dried tears on her face, and quickly berates herself for being so weak in front of James.

"Ok Aunt Lily.." Max quickly gives her a hug and beams up at her. "But don't get mad if Daddy comes down with green horns ok? I don't want him to know about them just yet."

Lily glances back nervously at the fireplace. She needs to get back to her house as soon as possible, because who knows what might have happened in the few minutes she'd spent here. James could have wrecked unfixable havoc by now! He seems to do that a lot. Lily thinks sourly. Not just in houses, but also in certain people's lives.

"Yes Max." Lily says, looking back down at the curly haired child. She smiles slightly, and kisses the top of his head.

Max bounds back up the stairs, and Lily waits for another unbearable 30 seconds, before she hears a loud BANG. Sirius comes flying down the stairs, and atop of his own black messy curls that Max seems to have inherited, are some green horns. However, Lily quickly forgets the said humorous horns, when she sees the rage in Sirius's yes.

"Where is he?" Sirius shouts. "Tell me where he is!" Lily stepped back slightly, and Sirius swings towards the fireplace. Lily hears Sirius muttering, but all she can make out is, "That bloody….bastard….gonna kill….rip him into little tiny dog bite sized morsels…..TEN YEARS!"

Lily tries to alert him about the green horns, by scratching the top of her own head rather inconspicuously, but Sirius is too busy ranting about James. With a sigh, she throws the green powder into Sirius's rather grand fireplace, and shouts, with an exasperated look at Sirius, "The Lair of the Demon Woman!" (Sirius had keyed his floo to go to Lily's house with the name of The Lair of the Demon Woman, a prank that he found rather hysterical. Lily, on the other hand, did not.)

She lands back in her house, where James is sitting on the sofa- the prat had made himself a cup of tea!

"What do you think you're doing?" Lily asks, her eyes flashing. "Did I say you could go into my kitchen?"

James cowers slightly, but then straightens up. "Where'd you go?" He asks, changing the subject. He puts the cup of tea down, and Lily growls. Then, she remembers.

Lily smirks. "Oh, you'll see." This'll be good….She thinks. Finally...some ass kicking that James deserves. Despite the smug though, Lily frowns. Why...after all these years? It still hasn't sunk in.

As if on cue, the floo flares, and Sirius dramatically jumps onto Lily's carpet.

"Padfoot?" James gasps, and for some odd reason his face is completely white.

And the fire in Sirius's eyes dies out. "Prongs." He says, hoarsely. "Where the hell have you been?"

And it's as if a trigger is pulled. Both men run towards each other, hugging, laughing, shouting. Lily's glad she put up the silencing charm, but for some reason she feels sad. This is the moment she's dreamed of for years, but she's just so damn angry.

However, it is when Lily sees the tears flowing down both men's faces, that she starts to feel slightly put-off. And curious. A whole spectrum of emotions is flowing through Lily as she watches the man she was in love with cry his eyes out. He and Sirius are clutching each other on the floor, and both are babbling.

"I'm sorry-"

"Where the hell have you been?" Sirius repeats.

"I just-"

"I can't-"

Lily sighs wearily. "Look, you two." Sirius and James's heads snap up. "Perhaps you should go back to Black Manor. I need to go to sleep and well-" She raises her eyebrows meaningfully at Sirius. "I've important stuff to do."

James gets up, brushes his pants. Lily realises that they look rather threadbare, which is very unlike the James she knew.

"I thought I would stay here?"

Lily feels her face getting red. Sirius, recognizing the warning signs, backs away.

"And tell me, James, why on Earth would I allow you to stay in my home?"

James blinks owlishly, and adjusts his glasses. "I- well it's kinda still my house as well."

Lily curses. She forgot about their house in Godric's Hollow still technically being in James's name.

"I- well- LOOK YOU CAN'T STAY HERE JAMES!" Lily yells.

James grins. "And why would that be?"

Lily's face just gets redder. "Because it isn't right! For you just to walk in here, and...and…"

James takes a step forward. "Lily, I've got a lot of explaining to do, I know. But I've finally figured it out?"

Lily's temper is near exploding. "And tell me, what would take you 10 years to bloody figure out?"

James is closing in her, slowly. "I know I was an arse, Lily, but I needed time."

"So is a decade good enough for you then? Or perhaps do you need another 10, 15 years?" Lily says, sarcastically.

James continues. "But I realised, that there was one thing I couldn't live without, all those years. I was miserable, without that one thing."

Lily can feel James's breath on her face. She can see his hazel eyes perfectly, and she can't help but shiver. He's grown older. She thinks, absentmindedly. I have as well, but he looks...older. She fights the urge to run her hands through his black hair, just like she'd done so many times when they had been together.

"Tell me what was that one thing?" Lily says, trying to meet James's eyes and not stare at the floor instead.

"You." The word is basically a whisper, and Lily just freezes, as his lips descend onto her. It's automatic, her kissing him back, because this is James.

But then she realises.

This is James.

With a cry, she slaps him on the face, and jumps back pressing a hand to her lips. James clutches the side of his face, and Sirius who had been standing awkwardly in the corner, rushes forward to James's aid.

"What was that for?" James says, annoyed.

"JAMES POTTER YOU ASS!" Lily screams. "You can't just come back here after 10 years and expect everything to be hunky-dory between the two of us! You left me, a week before our wedding! I had to deal with everything, my heartbreak, our friends heartbreak, your parents heartbreak. And then, after all that, it took me a long time to actually deal with the fact that YOU HAD LEFT ME! And what, do you think that my life hasn't gone on without you? Do you think that I've just been pining away for James Potter, all these years? Remember this, because trust me when I say this because it is the absolute truth, but I hate you." There is such venom in her voice, that James flinches.

"I-"

"Lily what's going on?" A deep voice sounds behind Lily, and she flinches.

"Oh god, darling I didn't think you'd be up!" Lily apologizes, and suddenly she's so exhausted, all she wants to do is go to her husband and just cry.

"You?" James says, looking at the man in the shadows. "Who are you?"

Severus Snape comes into the light of the sitting room. His hair is no longer greasy, but tied in a short ponytail. He's so different from the young boy that James had bullied all those years ago. And James doesn't recognize him.

"Sirius." Severus nods at the shaken man who is still holding James's shoulders.

Sirius inclines his head. "Sorry about all of this. But I think Lily can explain it better to you than me."

Lily leans on Severus, tired. "Well, that's James." She says, exhausted. She points at the said man.

"Ah. So he's finally decided to return?" There's a hint of a sneer in Severus's voice.

"It seems so." Lily puts her arms around Severus's waist, and closes her eyes. More than anything she just wants to cry, with Severus's arms around her, just cry.

"Like I said, who are you?" James repeats.

Lily can't help but chuckle weakly. "James, this is my husband."

James recoils, and goes pale. "Ah."

"Severus-"

"Snape?" There is an incredulous cry from James. "You married Snape?"

Lily glances at James. It's hard not to let the overwhelming feeling of loss and love overcome her, as she looks into his eyes. "Yes, James. I married Snape. It's-It's Lily Snape."

Lily glances at Severus, and can't help but sigh as she notices the gleeful expression in his eyes. He's been dreaming about this for years. Lily thinks, tiredly.

"I…" James is speechless, and his eyes flicker to Lily. "I thought...but she told me?" The last phrase is more of a mutter, and Lily frowns.

"Who told you what?"

James waves her question away. "Nothing. Nothing. Sirius, can I stay at yours then? I...I'm not ready to face Mum and Dad yet." There's an obvious tremble in his voice, and there's a small part in Lily that just wants to run to him and cry. But Severus is right there, her Severus, her husband.

Sirius nods encouragingly at James. "Sure Prongs. 'Night Sev, night Lils. James, the name is Black Manor, ok?" He guides James to the floo, and it is only then that Lily notices a large gash in James's leg.

"Wait- James what happened to your leg?"

James glances down. "Oh god." He mutters. "So it did hit me then."

He throws in a handful of green powder into the fireplace, and soon he's gone in a swirl of green flames.

Lily puts a hand on Sirius's shoulder just before he leaves. "Sirius...don't tell him just yet, ok?" She bites her lip. "I'm sorry."

Sirius gives her a bear hug. "This is going to be hard, Lily. You've got a choice, and you know it." He whispers in her ear.

Lily nods, and pushes him towards the fireplace. "Goodnight."

"Night."

Soon Sirius is gone, and Lily spins around, and meets Severus's unreadable eyes.

"Come here." The voice is soft. Lily rushes towards Severus, sobbing. She buries her head in his chest, and feels his hand stroking her hair.

"Why now? Why today?"

Severus studies Lily's eyes. "I don't know, darling. And by the way-" He snorts. "Happy anniversary."

Lily chuckles weakly. "What a wonderful day."

Severus leads her up the stairs. "Come on. Let's go back to bed. It's only two."

As Lily crawls back into her bed, with Severus's arms around her, she can't help but curse James Potter.

God, you can't ever just make things easy, can you? And with that, Lily slips into the dreamworld.

Ok, so there is the second chapter whoo hoo! Just a reminder, this is a James/Lily story, but of course, there is also major Snape/Lily. Who knows who'll she really end up with in the end? ;)