When lily woke up the next morning she forgot for a minute. She actually forgot that her father was dead. Once she remembered it took a minute for it to actually sink in. it took a minute for her to actually get enveloped by it. And when she did it was so much worse than she ever could have imagined. Her breath actually caught in her chest for a minute and she forgot how to breath. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to think about him. She knew it was a horrible thought but she wanted to get him out of her head. She just wanted the pain to go away. But it didn't.

Lily turned her head and looked at the light poking in through the curtains drawn around the windows. She could tell it was much later than she usually slept in. thank god it was a saturday.

Lily couldn't tell you how much longer she stayed in bed. Five minutes? Fourty? And hour or two? She really didn't know. She kept telling herself she was going to get up then wondering why. Why did she have to? Couldn't she just lay here. Her own bloody father was dead, after all.

Finally, when she grew bored of staring at the dust particles floating around in the room, she got up and dragged herself to the wash room. Thankfully, none of her other dorm mates were still up here. Their beds were all empty.

Lily shut the door behind her and began filling the tub with scalding hot water. She usually took a cold shower (because it was more efficient, of course) but not today. Today she would indulge in a burning hot bath. She let the water rise to a dangerous level before stepping in. it was hot and painful, but it was also numbing. She didn't mind. Water splashed out of the tub all around her when she sank her torso in. it hardly mattered. She would clean it up later. Or maybe she'd simply slip and crack her head open or some other absurd thing her mother always seemed to think she would do. She always told lily to be careful when getting out of the bath. Lily hadn't even been allowed to get out of the bath on her own until she was almost seven. It was an odd thing to remember. Oh well.

Lily sat in the bath about as long as she sat in her bed. And by that, she meant she didn't know. She knew by the time she drew herself out the water was growing cold. Which was slightly impressive, considering it had felt like a sweltering summer heat wave when she had stepped in.

Lily wrapped herself in the closest towel she could find. It was big and white and fluffy. Gross. Lily hated fluffy towels. They made her feel… suffocated. She immediately dropped the towel on the ground, right into a puddle she had left from standing there off to the side of the rug. Not knowing what else to do, or what else she could use to dry off she just sat down on top of it and let all the water drip off of her one drop at a time.

Her hair felt heavy and sticky on her back. It always took forever to dry. She hated that. She always wanted to get rid of it. Not all of it, of course. She had no intention of looking like some odd religious fanatic or freckled monkey, she just wanted it shorter. Maybe shoulder length. That would be nice. Easy to dry, at least. There was a spell to dry hair almost instantly but it was kind of difficult to pronounce and lily wasn't good enough to do it silently yet. She only did it when exasperated or desperate.

Lily slowly stood and looked in the large, framed mirror hanging on the wall. The first thing she noticed was how much she hated her body, but she supposed that wasn't important right about now. She moved her gaze to her hair. It looked too dark to truly be red it was so wet. Lily rubbed some of it between her fingers. The thick mess of it hung down towards where the bottom of her rib cage was. That was awful long. Why did lily keep it so long? Her father had always commented that it was too nice to cut short, so lily never did. But he was dead now, wasn't he? She could cut it as short as she wanted. Not that she couldn't have done it before, but if she did it now absolutely nobody would care. Why not cut it?

Lily began to wonder where some scissors might be before realizing that she didn't want any. Those were a muggle thing. Muggle like her family. Muggle like her father. And her father was the last thing she wanted to be reminded of right now. She would use her wand, then.

Lily picked up the towel off the ground and held the long tag away from the fabric. She muttered the incantation under her breath and made what she thought was the correct, accompanying motion for the cutting spell. She did indeed cut the tag, she also made a small cut in her finger along the way.

"Shite!" it didn't hurt terribly bad, she just hadn't been expecting it. Oh well. She knew the spell well enough apparently. Let's begin, then.

…[...[]...]...

Lily spent the next hour or so using the spell to chop off large pieces of her hair, letting them float down and make a halo around her feet. A fiery, dark halo that she was honestly glad to be rid of.

All together, her hair ended up just shorter than shoulder length and didn't actually look choppy or bad. It didn't exactly look as if a profesional had cut it, but close enough.

Now lily had to deal with actually getting clothes to put on. She had forgotten to bring some into the bathroom with her. Brilliant. She grabbed the damp towel with pieces of hair stuck to it and wrapped it around herself before exiting the wash room to go over to her trunk. She ruffled around in it a few minutes before emerging with some underwear, a pair of nice, comfortable, stretchy jeans and a very soft t-shirt. It was only after she walked back into the bathroom to get dressed that she realized the shirt was james's. Who cared.

Lily went and just kind of stood in the middle of her dorm room. What now?