I just want to note that there is one swear word in this chapter, I don't know if this merits a change in rating but from what I've read, it's only if it is frequent, extreme or if it is gratuitous. I think it's relevant to the story, and I think it's reflecting Lily's extreme anger and frustration in the situation.

Not to give too much away or anything!

She wasn't exactly looking forward to going home, but there was something infectious about the attitude of those who were heading towards more pleasant holidays. By the time the train rolled away from the station and Lily was walking to the Prefect's compartment, she had already confiscated several lit fireworks that people had thought might be fun to set off on the train, and had told countless people to settle down and one group had to be told to stop loudly singing Christmas carols.

She and Remus were among the first there and so they quickly signed up to take one of the earliest patrols. Their thinking was that if they got it out of the way early, it would be the end of all their responsibilities for the term and they could relax.

As they started their patrol through the compartments of the train, Lily wondered if she could get through the walk without him bringing up the fact that she had bought James a snowglobe. After about thirty seconds, in which Remus had maintained a serene quiet, Lily cracked and crumbled into tiny, anxious pieces.

"I don't know why I bought James that present."

Remus didn't say anything.

"If you get a chance, steal it for me?"

"I don't think I'll get a chance, he probably won't let it out of his sight."

Lily wondered why James would have been so fixated on it, the Quidditch game was a much better present, and less weird.

Why did she get him a snowglobe?

Sometimes she really wished that she would think about things a little more completely before she acted on them. The flaw in that plan was that when she did spend a lot of time thinking, it didn't seem to make the slightest bit of difference. She seemed to have been doomed to a life of awkward encounters and ill-advised conversations.

But then, there were worse things to suffer.

"Well then!" She searched for a new topic. "What are your plans for the holidays?"

"I'm mostly going to be working through the homework, I suppose! But I think I'm going to go and stay with James for the New Year."

"Oh, that's nice!"

"And you?"

"Oh, it'll be the same probably. I mean, I'll be doing the homework, not the staying with James, of course. I suppose I'll be avoiding my sister too, most of the time."

"What's wrong with your sister?"

"Nothing, not really, well, she's fine... very normal, and she doesn't particularly like 'our sort of people'."

"Meaning what?"

"You know, she doesn't like witches and wizards."

A voice spoke up behind her, and she turned, already subtly reaching into her pocket for her wand. The tone of the voice told her in a second that it wasn't a friend.

"I hope you're not grouping us together as the same sort. Though at least your Muggle sister knows where she's not wanted."

She really didn't want to get into a fight, not so close to being home, but with the memory of Marlene McKinnon fresh in her memory, she wasn't going to back away.

"Yeah, she's smarter than you that way, because you're definitely not wanted here." She sneered, doing her best impression of Marlene, determined not to look as fearful as she might have felt if she weren't so inescapably tired with this group of idiots.

"You think you're so smart, Evans!"

"I do, yeah... what about it?" She was surprised at the amazing power of emotional tiredness could do, as she sounded a lot more confident than she felt, and it was almost as if someone else was speaking, and she was just watching the situation unfold.

"Just wait, you'll get what's coming to you, Mudblood?"

"I can hardly bear the tension!" she responded sardonically, and she noticed that Remus was standing with her, a look on his face that suggested she wasn't the only one ready for a fight.

"Avery, I'd be careful about making threats you can't live up to." Remus' tone was light, conversational almost, but the look of distain on his face was unmistakable. "You're forgetting that we've seen you try and cast a stunning spell, you've got more chance of spontaneously developing wings, than of managing to hit one of us before the other curses you, so is that a chance you really want to take? Even though I can see how brave you are, needing six mates backing you up before you can even speak to a girl!"

"You shut up, Lupin. You think being half-blood will protect you? You're scum, just like that!"

'That', judging by his sneer, was Lily.

"So you hate half-bloods too? What about your little mate, Severus back there? He's not been telling you he's pureblood, has he? Mind you, you lot are just about thick enough to fall for it, so I wouldn't be surprised." She snapped before Remus could say anything. She was angry, so angry that she wasn't avoiding, like usual, any mention of Severus. She looked at him, addressing him despite the fact that he clearly would have preferred her to ignore him.

"See, the thing is, Severus, I never cared what you were, because I knew, unlike your new pals, that where a person comes from doesn't make a blind bit of difference. It's who they are that matters to me." She turned back to Avery, fuelled by the utter lack of reaction from Severus, and continued her tirade.

"And even if it did, I'd still rather have my parents, than whatever close-minded bigots you were unfortunate enough to suffer through childhood with. Better mud for blood than shit for brains."

She had really done it now. Avery reached for his wand, but he had been confident with all his friends around him and he hadn't noticed Lily and Remus were more prepared for the situation turning sour and had their wands pointed at his face before any of the Slytherins could react.

"I think this is over. Why don't you go back into your compartment like good little children and get back to applauding yourselves for being purebloods." Lily kept her voice low, and was glad that the tremor in her heart didn't pass into it.

"Watch your back, Evans. If I were you, I'd stay at home with the rest of your sort."

"Thanks for that! See you next term."

She smiled sweetly as they retreated into the compartment, and, just to irritate them even more, she reached out and slid the door shut on their glowering faces.

Remus and Lily hadn't stopped laughing by the time they had finished their patrol and they fell into the compartment with the others still laughing.

"What's so funny you two?"

"It's nothing important. It was just Lily sorting out some Slytherins."

"You weren't too bad yourself." Lily smiled, as Remus sat down next to James and Lily curled up in the space beside Jac. They told the story of what had happened, and managed to make it sound less scary and funnier than it really had been. Jac turned to her after a moment.

"How are things with Petunia anyway?"

"I haven't heard from her but I think it's a safe bet that she hasn't spontaneously decided that I'm anything other than a complete embarrassment to her."

Lily fixed her gaze out of the window, not wanting to think about the time ahead of her, before she would be coming back to Hogwarts, which she would have to spend being constantly reminded of how ashamed her sister was to be related to her. She was grateful that the others seemed to notice her unwillingness to talk about home and moved on, letting her swallow the horrible lump in her throat and blink a few times, all the while keeping her gaze fixed on the landscape whizzing by outside the window.

"So, if that's London, then it's on the other side of this bit... right across here." Jac was holding one side of a map of Britain that had come from god-knows-where. James was holding the other side and squinting at the map, his glasses pushed up on his head.

"I think I knew that."

"Well, you've been to my house, so I should think so!"

"I didn't get there by map, though!"

"Still, you should know where you are in the country!"

James shrugged, and started to fold the map up.

"What about you, Evans? Where are you going?"

Lily turned away from the window, not sure exactly how long she had been staring wistfully outwards.

"What?" She blinked, dazed.

"Where's your house on this?"

Lily pulled the map towards her, folded it a few times to get the right part to show and pointed to a small word, 'Cokeworth'.

"Just outside there."

"But that's miles away. You'd practically be better jumping off the train now, rather than going all the way to London!"

"I know, I keep telling my Dad, I could just get the Muggle train from King's Cross to Cokeworth and he could pick me up from there... but he likes the journey, and he says its tradition."

Her mum had insisted on her first year that they all go, Petunia included, to King's Cross for the day to see Lily off. They had driven down the night before and spent the night in the most horrible, crumbly old hotel, before she left for Hogwarts. It had been a thoroughly bad-tempered affair, with Petunia whining and hissing about everything, seemingly scared someone would see her talking to Lily and think she approved of her sister's 'weirdness'. She had an abiding memory of eating toast and egg in the dining room, with her mum and dad, while Petunia sulked in the room under the pretence of getting ready.

Her dad hadn't quite wanted to give it up after Mum died, but eventually, in perhaps Lily's third or fourth year, Petunia refused to go, and Lily and her dad began a new tradition, where they loaded the car up with sweets and enough sandwiches and drinks to feed an army and drove all the way down to London. Lily knew how pointless it was, but she couldn't quite bring herself to refuse, not when it was so fun to do, and so nice to spend time with her dad without Petunia. Her dad hadn't been one for traditions, he would have eaten a baked potato on Christmas day if it were left to him, but her mum had loved traditions, and when she died, her dad had tried very hard to keep her present in at least some parts of their life.

Lily smiled sadly as she thought about her mum. Lily missed desperately the way she had always been so willing to accept everything that Lily was. There were so few people who were really like that, and not enough of them in Lily's life. Lily often thought that if she didn't end up like Marlene McKinnon, she hoped she would end up like her Mum.

The inhabitants of the compartment lapsed into an easy silence for a while which was only broken when a tap at the door signalled that the witch who wheeled the snack trolley up the corridor was outside. Jac almost kicked Lily in the face in her hurry to get to the door. She bought a few of each of her favourites, including a packet of Strawberry and Lime Poppets that she threw at Lily when she sat back down in the compartment.

"Here, I think I've got some change." Lily dug around in her pockets, but Jac waved a hand and Lily accepted the sweets.

She offered them around, and everyone shook their head.

"I don't know why you like them, they taste horrible!" Jac wrinkled her nose as she tore into a bag and stuffed a handful of sweets in her mouth.

"I love them!" Lily shrugged. "We've got something like them in the shop; they're the closest to Muggle sweets you lot get!"

"You have a shop?" Sirius asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, my dad does, we live above it."

A light of recognition came into James' eyes, and he clicked his fingers.

"That's the place with the wall of sweets, right?"

Lily wondered how on earth he knew that. She didn't think that the shelves in her dad's shop were the sort of thing she had ever discussed with James.

Then, she was struck by the memory of something that had happened years before. She had been at one of Slughorn's meetings and he had asked her about what her parents did. The fact that her mother was a housewife seemed fairly unsurprising to the pure and half-bloods listening, but when she had said that her father worked in a shop, and they lived above it, there had been a change in the looks. She had never thought before that moment that she might be ashamed of what her father did for a living. She was proud of who he was, she wanted to be like him and she knew how little it mattered what your job was or how much money you had as long as you were happy. She had spent weeks learning to work the temperamental old till that had been in the shop longer than Lily had been alive. Her Dad was brilliant, he was kind and generous and so utterly devoted to his wife, and daughters, and his community. He was amazing. So, it was strange to see the reaction of a room of people who obviously seemed to think that she ought to be embarrassed of him, or his profession.

"You live above a shop?" Someone had sneered, and she had felt a blush creeping onto her face. It was the same blush that would shade her cheeks when she learned not too long after, that Severus had lied. She had asked him if her being a Muggleborn would make a difference, and he had told her it wouldn't. When she had heard the first taunt, mentioning her blood status, by some idiotic second year who couldn't have known the meaning of his words, she had blushed, with a strange, unfamiliar shame.

"What kind of shop?" another voice had asked, sounding far more interested than judgemental. She looked up, and saw James, holding more food in his hands than any eleven year old ought to have been eating, a slice of cake in each fist, and a bright look in his eye. She had thought that he was making fun of her, but when she had mentioned the wall of sweets behind the counter, she had realised that he just didn't care about whether her parents were rich, or pureblood. He just liked sweets.

"Yeah, that's the one!" She said, snapping her attention back to the present, and everyone seemed a lot more interested. She thought back to the shelves, with rows on rows of glass jars, filled with hundreds and thousands of little sweets, waiting to be picked and weighed and twisted up in little brown paper bags.

"Can we visit?" Sirius asked.

"No!" Lily shouted, but Jac was already nodding vigorously and even Remus was looking interested.

"Definitely, we should!" Jac laughed. "We should go, support the Evans family business empire."

"Please don't!" Lily muttered, trying not to enjoy the thought of Petunia meeting Sirius. There was something completely incongruous about the two that it seemed impossible that they could ever exist in the same place. There was a brief, but predictable, moment of sad silence, as she realised that the only reason that those two parts of Lily's life were so separate was the fact that Petunia had spent every second since Lily's eleventh birthday trying to pretend it didn't exist.

The magic and the Muggle in her were both just as real, and it was hard to imagine a future that didn't include them both to some degree. Knowing that there were a lot of people, not just Petunia, who would have preferred her to stay in the Muggle world made it almost easier to demand her place. It was always depressing to be reminded of that particular faction of wizarding society, and she was glad that they weren't all like that. Looking around the compartment of the train that she was sitting in, she saw a group of people who she was fairly sure would never think of her the way the others might, as a menace or a nuisance to be eradicated.

Here, she was among friends. The sort of friends, she knew, who were so willing to accept everything that she was. Muggle, magic, and whatever else she could conjure up. She thought about the fact that there were in fact more people in her life like her mother than she used to think.

Maybe that would be enough to help her endure Petunia.