A/N: this chapter is dedicated to Tate (Somewhat Quirky), who I love dearly. Happy birthday, angel face!

Disclaimer: yeah, i don't own any of this.

Riot Van

Up rolls a riot van

And sparks excitement in the boys

Celia Mitchell lay cold and pale in her hospital bed. Stitches ran along her left cheek, down to her jaw and up to her forehead. The skin around the stitches was red and puffy, and her eyes were closed; she was sleeping. Alex was too, in the chair next to her bed, still gripping his dear friend's thin hand, curled up like a cat.

Marlene and Dorcas sat in silence on the floor by the window, and Lily felt like she was interrupting some kind of vigil.

They said nothing as she entered the hospital room, but Dorcas' large green eyes widened in horror when she saw Lily's cuts and bruises. The red head waved in a nonchalant way that she hoped suggest that her injuries were nothing (which they were, really, in contrast to Celia's).

"Come sit here," Dorcas whispered, "we're waiting for her to wake up."

Marlene said nothing, but locked her eyes to the sign that read 'Mitchell, Celia' on the back of the door. Her jaw was set, like she was trying not to give anything away. Her walls, one might say, were up.

"How was it?" Dorcas asked Lily as she sat beside her. Her jeans were caked in blood; she was surprised that they let her in (perhaps they thought she was a patient…)

"It was tough," she answered truthfully, "but not as tough as being here, I reckon,"

There was silence, and Dorcas patted Lily's arm affectionately. After a while, the brunette spoke softly.

"The waiting, I think," she said, "is the hardest. She'll be alright; people who are made of sunshine always are, but waiting for it…? It's tough, y'know?"

Lily looked over at Alex and Celia; yes, she knew.

"Made of sunshine…" she smiled in spite of the situation they were in, "I like that…"

"You've got a scar," Marlene said suddenly, thickly, like she was full of tears, "they fucking scarred you."

"Cee's is worse," Lily replied, "mine's a nick compared to hers…"

There was a movement from the bed, and all eyes snapped to the sleeping girl. But it was nothing; Celia had merely moved, dropped Alex's hand, and now slept on her side, her stitches gleaming in the harsh artificial light.

"How's James?" Dorcas asked quietly.

"He…he is…" Lily couldn't find the words; how could she talk of James when she was covered in blood that was not her own, when she was sat in a hospital with a girl that was most probably scarred for life? In the end, she decided to tell the truth, because the truth was always easier than a lie.

"He confuses me," she confessed, "he acts like I…we bicker, constantly, but that Bella woman insulted me, and he just went for her, and he's rude and cold to me, but I accidentally held his hand and I swear to God, Dor, I thought his face was alight with happiness…"

Dorcas caught Marlene's eye, and both girls grinned widely. The grins became bursts of laughter, and the bursts of laughter became yelps, and the yelps became so loud they might awake the dead. Indeed, they woke Alex, who stirred and mumbled in his sleep, and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

Lily, meanwhile, could not fathom for the life of her what was so funny about the whole thing.

"Why are you laughing?" she asked (but a smile was creeping onto her lips too) "What's so funny?"

Marlene snorted loudly, and Dorcas cackled more.

"Wuzzgoin' on?" Alex grumbled, and the brunette swallowed down her giggles.

"James," Dorcas beamed, "has pulled a Doc on Ginge here."

"A what?" the aforementioned Ginge spluttered.

Alex sighed, but a smile crept onto his previously worried face. "You'll wake Cee," he warned, but Marlene just laughed harder.

"Good!" declared the Scottish girl, "Then we can get out of here sooner! I bloody hate hospitals!"

Dorcas' smile dimmed a little; "This isn't about you, Marlene-" she began, but Alex, who seemed to sense the tension (not that it was hard, thought Lily, it seemed visibly darker without Dorcas' grin) interrupted her.

"Someone tell Ginge the story of Doc and Bron, so she'll understand," he said quickly.

"You do it, Al," Dorcas replied, "You're the best story teller out of all of us."

"Says the writer," Marlene pointed out.

"Alex is an actor, McKinnon, he can do voices," the brunette smirked, "won't you, Al?"

"I will try." Alex promised, "Now, Ginge. Are you sitting comfortably?"

Lily leant back against the radiator. "Now I am," she said.

"Then I'll begin. Long ago, in like, 1974 or something-"

"That was two years ago."

"Yes Marlene thank you for your input. As I was saying, long ago, two years ago, Bronwyn Dearborn- or Bronwyn Jones, as she was then- moved to the Big Smoke to become open a bakery-"

"Bron doesn't own a-" Lily began

"We're getting to that, Ginge. Anyway. So there she was, alone in this huge city with just a recipe book and a pocket full of dreams, and she does what any sensible and reasonable person does. She moves into a very dangerous squat with an old school friend."

"Who's the old-?"

"Shh! Listen!" Dorcas sat up straight, grinning with childish glee.

"The old school friend doesn't live with us anymore, but that's not the point. The point is, is that also living in this squat was Caradoc Dearborn, who Bron didn't know very well. And they fought like cat and dog. Their arguments are the stuff of legend, I swear. Caradoc claimed it was because Bronwyn acted like she ran the place, and that she was so single minded that she didn't think about The Cause, and Bron says it was because Caradoc was rude first, and she's a member of the 'respect has to be earned' school of thought. So, they bicker constantly for six months, until one day things got horribly out of hand-" at this point, Alex adopted a thick Welsh accent- "'you're nasty and arrogant and I doubt you'll ever open that bloody bakery you keep harping on about'-"

"Note, please, Lily," Marlene chipped in, "that we don't actually know what was said. But the story is the stuff of legend."

"Thank you for your input Marlene. So anyway, Bronwyn was so upset by Doc's words that she threw a plant pot at him, and packed her bags to leave."

"Albus," Dorcas continued, "was devastated by this possible loss – he loves Bron's cake, see-"

"I thought I was telling this story, Miss Meadowes!" Alex protested. Dorcas giggled.

"Sorry."

"So you should be- anyway. So Albus goes and finds Doc, and he's really shaken up about the plant pot throwing and things, and they sit down and talk about it and Albus says something like-" he deepened his voice and spoke slowly, in what was really quite an accurate impression of Dumbledore, "'the line between love and hate is thin and you may have crossed it Caradoc' or something like that-"

"We think it might've been a quote from Oscar Wilde," Dorcas sighed, "he's always quoting Oscar Wilde."

"But anyway," Alex butted in, "Caradoc came to the conclusion- realized, really, that he was arguing with Bron because of unresolved sexual tension."

"Unresolved what?" Lily yelped. She hoped he hadn't just said what she thought he did. He couldn't have.

"Shhh, you'll wake Cee! And unresolved sexual tension."

"It's when two people hate each other so much they need to fuck," Marlene said, "Jesus I need a fag."

"Go and smoke outside then," Dorcas replied, "but yeah, Lily, that's what unresolved sexual tension is. And it's what, by the sounds of it, you and James have."

Lily was slightly taken aback. She didn't hate James so much she loved him, she just plain hated him. Right?

And anyway, there must more to the story of Bron and Doc; two people don't just go from hating each other to being married, do they?

"Well regardless of whether it's true for James and me," Lily tried to shrug off the accusations that she wanted to jump James Potter, "what happened with Bron and Caradoc? People don't just bonk and then decide they want to get married."

Dorcas and Marlene shared a look that Lily couldn't decipher, and Alex took up the story.

"So Bron's standing on the platform at King's Cross Station, and she's waiting for the train to take her back to Cardiff, and suddenly she hears someone shout for her, so she looks round thinking it's probably her mate or someone, that she's forgotten something at the squat. But it's not. It's Caradoc. And she says to him 'ugh I was leaving to get rid of you', and he tells her, quite clearly, that they don't hate each other, they're just very attracted to each other-"

"To which Bronwyn was skeptical about, obviously," Dorcas continued, "I think she thought that he just wanted a lay. But! She could kind of see where he was coming from-"

"She told me it was because she wanted a lay too!" Marlene protested, but Dorcas ignored her.

"So she went back to the squat, and that night they had dinner together, on the grounds that there was to be no arguing…"

"And they've been together every night since," finished Alex, "they got married six months ago."

"How lovely," Lily replied, "but I don't want to shag James Potter. I want him to stop."

"Stop doing what?" Dorcas asked curiously.

"Stop looking at me in a way that makes me shiver," she responded (and she was surprised by how quickly the words fell from her lips), "stop making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, stop making my skin feel more like skin, y'know?"

Dorcas was silent for a moment. And then Marlene spoke with a wry grin;

"You do realize you've just described the feeling of fancying the pants off someone, right?"

"I didn't!"

"You did!" Marlene cackled, "You did, you did, you did!"

Lily opened and closed her mouth several times. She did not fancy James Potter; she would not even allow herself to entertain the idea, she would forget all about this unresolved sexual tension and concentrate on the matter in hand; Celia, and the fact that she was caked in blood that was not her own.

"Look," she told them, as they sat there chuckling, "just because this was true for the Dearborns doesn't mean it's true for James and me. And I really don't think that it's important in light of recent events." And with that, she nodded at Celia.

The hours seemed to tick by so slowly it was like watching paint dry. Celia did not awaken, and soon Alex dropped off again ("he's exhausted, bless him," Dorcas clucked as she draped a thin hospital blanket over his knees) and the nurses came and went, and never acknowledged the three girls sat on the floor, leant against the radiator. Lily wondered if they even saw them; they were hidden behind Celia's bed. At approximately half past nine, Albus Dumbledore strode into the room, arm in arm with Mrs. Figg, who had concern etched onto her aging features.

"Time to go now, girls," Dumbledore said softly, "Arabella will walk you home,"

"We don't need walking home, Albus," Dorcas replied, equally as softly, "We're girls, not infants."

"That may be, Dor," Mrs. Figg said, "but those monsters are still out there."

"What, and us walking with some little old lady's going to stop them is it?" Marlene scoffed. Dorcas gave a look, a look that said 'shut up Marlene', and the blonde girl stuck out her chin in defiance.

"Miss McKinnon," Dumbledore said, a warning tone in his voice. Still Marlene said nothing, instead she got to her feet, and began to leave the room.

"Well c'mon then!" she said with a tone of false cheeriness, "let's go home with our great protector, Mrs. Arabella Figg!"

"Marlene, must you always-?" began Dorcas, but Marlene tossed her hair like she was preparing to go into battle. It suddenly occurred to Lily that James might've been right; Marlene wasn't going to save her life. How could anyone so childish save anything?

Silently, the three of them filed out of the hospital with Mrs. Figg, each preoccupied with their own thoughts and feelings.

Mrs. Figg was right; a gang of leather jacketed boys and girls were hanging around on the corner, and as they saw the four of them pass, they began to shout and jeer.

"Punk scum!" they yelled, "WHAT YOU'RE DRESSED LIKE THAT FOR, TARTS? OFF TO SUCK DUMBLEDORE'S COCK ARE WE?"

The jeers seemed to make Dorcas into a queen; she stood taller, and Lily could almost see the words deflecting off the steel she had wrapped herself in. Marlene, on the other hand, seemed to get hit by every insult, and it chipped away at her armour until she had nothing.

Lily was not frightened of them; sticks and stones and all that, but the sight of Marlene crumbling before her made her blood boil.

"D'you kiss your mum with that mouth?" she called over to them, and the girls- Bella, and the blonde girl Remus had argued with- cackled loudly.

"No, but we kiss yours!" an eerily pale blonde man shouted back. Dorcas spun on the spot (the words about her mother had riled her) and raised one hand, with her middle finger sticking up.

"Piss off!" she called (the calmness had been interrupted by a storm) "We don't want you here!"

There was a murmur from the crowd, and Bella almost fell forward in her eagerness to confront Dorcas. The air crackled with tension, and Lily found that she was rooted to the spot as Bella moved closer to the tiny brunette.

"Whore," she hissed, "common tramp." Dorcas did not flinch.

"I'd rather be a common tramp," she breathed, "than a greedy and cruel money grabber who no one cares for."

There was a muffled screech from Bella, and she grabbed Dorcas' tight curls in her pale hands, and drew her head to her knee. Dorcas made no sound, but reached up and pulled Bellatrix's hair. The thin woman hissed like a snake and slapped the brunette across the face. Her claws cut Dorcas' round cheeks and the blood dripped onto the sticky tarmac.

Marlene lunged forward and grabbed the back of Bella's head; Lily felt sick to her stomach as the blonde woman (perhaps she was Bella's sister) joined the fight, screeching obscenities and clawing at Marlene's back. Mrs. Figg made a noise like a strangled cat, but did not join them, and Lily found her feet carrying her to the crowd, her voice screeching like a banshee as she dragged Bella away from Dorcas, who spat blood onto the pavement. Lily tightened her grip around the attacker as she shrieked and writhed in her arms.

"LET ME GO, YOU FILTHY SLUT!" Bella screeched, and Lily merely dug her fingers deeper into the dark haired woman's arms. Dorcas wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and stormed towards Marlene, but the blonde seemed to need no help. She fought her attacker with ferocity and a constant energy that would have been admirable if it had not been so terrifying. The boys stood jeering and cat calling, but Lily could not seem to hear them; all she could hear was Marlene's screeches of rage as she walloped Bella's sister. She appeared to be winning, because she was the one least covered in blood, and the other girl appeared to be crying.

"FIGHT BACK!" Marlene roared, "FIGHT BACK, YOU COWARD!"

"Marlene," Lily wasn't even aware of speaking, "Marlene…"

"I SAID FIGHT BACK!" her friend was ignoring her, and the air had stopped crackling. It was just sad now, the sight of this ice queen half screaming at her mirror image, who curled up and sobbed. It made Lily's heart ache and her stomach churn.

Dorcas caught Lily's eye, but the redhead couldn't look back, it hurt too much. She had thought so much of Marlene, thought so much of her effortless attitude and her hair swishes and dirty laugh. But she didn't think a lot of the girl in front of her, caked in blood and gravel.

Dorcas sighed, like she'd done this before, and in one fluid movement managed to drag Marlene from the blonde girl's quivering body.

Marlene screamed, and Dorcas threw her on the floor with disgust.

"You monster!" screeched Bella, who ran to her sister's side, "You disgusting whore! We'll call the police."

Dorcas scoffed. "Call the fuzz on us, Lestrange, and we'll let slip exactly who slit Celia's face open. Both sides of this goddamn turf war have done some stupid shit," she paused, and helped Marlene up, "and we'd do well to keep the authorities out of it. None of us fancy a stretch in Holloway, do we?"

There was a mumble from the crowd, but Dorcas did not wait to hear their reply; she set off towards the house, walking like she was made of steel again, and Lily had to run to keep up with her.

The events of the last few days had drained our heroine, had exhausted her in ways she did not think it possible to be exhausted in, and it occurred to her as she lay on the blow up mattress in Marlene's bare floored room (Marlene who had not gone to bed, who Lily could hear downstairs, drinking and crying) that she had not called her mother since that first day. Her mother, who had mopped her tears and kissed her scraped knees and who did, in her own way, love her.

So, the next morning, at half past seven, when the rest of the house still slept, she gathered twenty five pence from coins that had been dropped between the floorboards and behind armchairs and on windowsills, and snuck out, to the phone box where Marlene had first found her.

Ring. Ring. Ri-i-i-n-g.

"Evans household, Petunia speaking."

"Tuney, it's me."

"Lily?"

"Yeah."

"Where is God's name are you? D'you know what we've had to tell the neighbours? We've had to tell them that you've gone to the seaside for your health! For your health! No one believes us, of course, we've had that greasy boy and the nervy girl you hung around with at school-"

"Sev and Mary?"

"Yes, them, they're here every other day, asking when you'll be back, you've driven Mother up the wall, she can't believe it, she's got a runaway for a daughter, Lily, do you know how shameful that is?"

Lily could almost see Petunia in her head, stood rigid like a board in their hallway, her thin blonde hair swished over her forhead in an attempt to look like Farrah Fawcett, the telephone cord wrapped around one bony finger, and a smirk on her face.

God, she couldn't stand Petunia.

"Tuney, I just want to talk to Mum."

"Well you can't." Lily suppressed an eye roll, which was silly, because Petunia couldn't actually see her.

"Why can't I?"

"She's in bed. Her nerves are shot. She thinks you're working as a prostitute." A pause. "You're not working as a prostitute, are you?"

"No, Petunia, I'm not."

"But even if you were," Petunia mused, "you'd say you weren't, just so we wouldn't come after you. See?"

"No I don't," she sighed, and sank back onto the little table where the phonebook lay, "I don't see. Care to explain?"

"No," Petunia replied in clipped tones, "I can't say I do." Another pause. "If you're not working as a prostitute…then what are you doing?"

Lily thought for a moment. What was she doing? She was sleeping on a deflating mattress, and reading music magazines until three, and eating lunch with a rock'n'roll band- wait, no, that's not what she was doing. That's not what she had been doing the last twenty four hours. She'd been bashed in the face and got dirt over Marlene's denim jacket and spent six hours in a tiny hospital room and she'd not slept in a proper bed in a week, oh God.

"I'm…I'm just sorting myself out." A lie.

"There's nothing to sort out, Lily! There is no reason why you shouldn't come home right now, and go to college like you talked about, you know, there is still a place for you,"

For a moment, Lily saw herself in her mind's eye, going home, sleeping in a warm bed with clean sheets and two pillows, eating breakfast at a normal time, never being scared of getting punched in the face as she walked down the street, knowing what she was doing every day, having a plan.

"Could I?" she heard herself muttering, mumbling like a child.

"Of course you could," Petunia replied.

"And everything," was she crying? She was crying, oh bloody fucking hell, she was not cut out for this, "could go back to how it was? Right?"

"Hmm, yes, well, I don't know about that," Petunia tittered, "you won't be able to go to those concert things that you and Mary attended- wasn't that where this whole thing started?"

Was it? She didn't think it was; she was drowning anyway, she would've done something without that twenty minute set, without Marlene. Wouldn't she?

"Not really," she replied dully, "it started before that…"

"Well anyway," Petunia carried on regardless, "you certainly wouldn't be able to see any of the people you're currently hanging around with," she sniffed, and Lily rolled her eyes, "what do they do?"

"Petunia, I just want to talk to Mum, please," there was no point in talking to her, no point in answering her questions when she didn't listen to the answers. She just wanted her mum.

"I told you Lily, she's in bed, you- oh!" There was a mumbling on the other end, and Lily heard her father's voice, as steady and calm as it always had been, talking to Petunia. She could not decipher any words, but from the way her sister's voice got higher and higher in pitch and faster and faster in speed, she could gather that her father wanted to know who she was talking to, and Petunia wasn't co-operating.

"Dad!" she shouted down the phone, "Dad, it's me!" Like he can hear you, Evans, she thought bitterly. "Give him the phone, Petunia!"

Petunia didn't.

The noises grew louder; there seemed to be some sort of slanging match going on, but still all Lily could hear was the rustle of Petunia's sharp collar against the speaker.

One last try, Evans; "Tuney, give Dad the phone! Please!"

Nothing. A long, singular beep. Petunia had put the phone down, and Lily had no money left. Oh bollocking fuck. The tears kept falling down her cheeks, and she couldn't stop them. Scratch that, she didn't want to stop them. The enormity of the last few days kept hitting her like waves, and she felt like she had landed face first in the wet sand, and it had got all up her nose and in her eyes and her mouth. She wanted to spit it out, spit out the sand and the sadness, and she couldn't. She was drowning in it.

Ignoring the broken glass that littered the floor, she sank into a sitting position, head in hands, and she cried until she had no tears left.

James Potter had awoken early on that day too, because Sirius, who slept on a mattress next to his bed, was snoring, and he could hear someone on the landing, which never made it easy to sleep. He didn't want anyone fucking with his family (of course, it could just be someone going to the loo, it was probably just someone going to the loo, but angry punks never do think rationally). And so he climbed out of bed, nimbly and quickly, and tiptoed out into the night.

It was Subs, which somehow didn't surprise him, and she was dressed in her funny little corduroy skirt and she'd wrapped herself in McKinnon's battered denim jacket, and she looked sad. He watched her slip out of the house in silence, and he wondered where she was going. She was strange, was Lily. She'd come in all guns blazing, but now he thought about it, it was like she didn't know what direction she was firing in. He'd been the same, he knew, when he'd first turned up here, a fifteen year old runaway, armed with a ten pack of fags and Peter. Good old Pete, he thought, as he wandered down the stairs, he'd always been there. I'll have a cigarette, thought James, then I'll wake him up early, just for a laugh. The sun was rising above London, and all seemed well.

He'd almost forgotten about Lily, as he sat in the back room smoking, and the door clicked open. He'd been thinking about other things, like the weird green patch on the mattress where Sturgis slept, or how they should get Celia some flowers when she got out of hospital; girls liked that sort of thing, didn't they?. Thinking of Celia made James think of Bellatrix Lestrange, and Tom Riddle, and thinking of that at this time in the morning was never a good thing. They'd messed with his family, an unprovoked attack on a girl he would defend with his life, and they would pay. They'd have to pay. Actually, from what he could gather when the girls came home, they already had, but then again, that was McKinnon, and she was a mess.

The door clicked, and he jumped to his feet, ever the soldier.

"Who's there?" he called as quietly as he could, "Lestrange?"

There was a shuffling noise from the hall, and, clutching his cigarette tightly between his fingers, he advanced. If it was Lestrange, then he couldn't be held responsible for his actions.

It wasn't. It was Lily.

She stood in the hall with her jacket wrapped around her, and dirt on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked miserable, and small and it was at that moment James realized that she was sixteen years old, and a long way from home.

"Oh," she choked, "it's you."

"No need to sound so enthusiastic," he replied dryly, "Jesus, you look terrible."

"I don't see Jesus anywhere," she said thickly, "and thanks."

"No problem," he grinned in what he thought was a charming way (it wasn't; she thought he looked smarmy) "Cigarette?"

He offered her, stupidly, his own half smoked one, and she pulled a face.

But she was thinking, he could tell; her nose was scrunched up and her eyebrows furrowed together. Lily Suburbs, he thought to himself, was very obvious.

"Not yours," she said eventually, "I won't smoke yours."

"What?" he glanced at his hand, "Oh, right, yeah. No, you won't. The, urm," he nodded towards the back room, "rollies are through here."

"Right," she said, with a sad little sigh that made his grin drop a little.

"You alright?"

She shook her head, and he said nothing. He didn't really know what to say. What could you, to a girl who didn't want to talk about it? In an attempt to lighten the mood, he began to hum, and she shot him a look that was somewhere between disgust and pity. They wandered into the back room, side by side, and he threw her the roll ups wordlessly.

"They belong to Padfoot, technically," he told her as they sat on the stained mattress, and she rolled her cigarette in silence, "don't tell him."

"I won't," she promised. A pause, and then; "why'd you call him that?"

"What, Padfoot? Oh, well, it's a long sto-"

"They call you Prongs."

"Well observed, Miss Suburbs. D'you want a light?"

She looked confused for a moment, and then realized what she was holding. Oh if my mother could see me now, she thought dryly.

"Please."

He whipped out a box of matches, and lit it obligingly. "I've never seen you smoke before."

"I've never needed it, before."

"But this isn't your first fag, right? I mean, I don't want to be responsible for any smokers cough you get, I don't want that on my conscience,"

"Relax," she seemed to perk up a bit, and nudged his shoulder with her own, "I've smoked before."

"I don't believe you."

"Summer 1975. Back of my first boyfriend's car. It was disgusting, and I was nearly sick. Might've had something to do with the wine I drank with it, but it happened."

"Thought you said Surrey was boring as fuck?"

"It was," she sighed, and inhaled, "that boyfriend is now training to be an accountant, and I didn't have another one after that evening," she paused, and exhaled. "An accountant, though? I mean, really, at eighteen?"

"How long did you go out for?" he asked her, and she drew her knees up to her chin.

"I dunno, couple of months, more or less," she closed her eyes as she took a drag, and he saw then, how she really was, scared and sad and beautiful, "he was a shit kisser."

And she opened her eyes, and they giggled like children. Which, James Potter supposed, they were.