Mary,

This is Lily. I know it probably seems like this is coming out of nowhere, me writing to you. To be blunt, I know we've never been that close. But I've lived with you for the last six and a half years, and I don't know, I think that counts for something, or it should, anyway. I remember how you sort of took me in two summers ago when I had just ended things with Severus and I didn't have anybody. I feel like I failed you a little after that when I fell into James and away from you. I'm sorry for that—if it seemed like I didn't appreciate what you did for me. I appreciated it. I still do.

That's actually kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. Severus and I were so close, and now James and I are, that I realized recently that I sort of lost myself in them, if that makes sense? I've been living in a bubble, and I don't know where to find myself in it anymore. I don't know, I suppose I just thought

xx

With a disgusted sort of noise, Lily sets down her quill and crumples up the half-written sheaf of parchment. She doesn't know what she's thinking, reaching out to Mary. What she wrote in that draft may be true—Mary may have looked after Lily a little the summer before sixth year—but where was Mary when the whole school was judging Lily for sleeping with James? Where was she when Sirius came onto Lily's boyfriend and the only person Lily had left in the castle to talk to was—?

In fairness, it's not like Mary knows the particulars of the tangled web of secrets Lily found herself plunged into in the last year and a half. Still, she just—let Lily go. Maybe Lily shouldn't have drifted away from her, but when she did, Mary didn't exactly fight hard to keep her, not even when she did know an inkling of what Lily was going through.

All of this, of course, is Lily's own fault: she's the one who allowed James Potter to take over her life in the first place. It's not like she doesn't love him, but where is she underneath all of his baggage? Does she even know?

Maybe she's going about this the wrong way. It's not like she's going to find herself inside Mary. Mary's just another person, just like Severus and just like James; she's not exactly harboring any secret truths about Lily's soul.

There's a knock on Lily's bedroom door, and she quickly tosses the balled-up parchment in the trash can beside her desk. "Yes?"

It's Dad, which she's glad for. She doesn't know when things between her and Mum got so messed up, and she knows exactly when things between her and Petunia got so messed up, but Dad, at least, has always been there for Lily.

"Hey, Lils. You busy?"

Lily turns her chair around to face Dad properly. "Not really. I was just writing a letter to my friend Mary, but I don't think I'm going to send it."

"Mary? That's one of your roommates, right? The one who kept coming around that one summer?"

"That's the one."

"Why aren't you going to send the letter? It sure seemed like you two were close there for a while," says Dad as he comes fully into Lily's room and plunks down onto her bed.

"I don't know if I'd call us 'close,'" Lily admits. "I think she felt sorry for me, you know, when Severus and I fell out, but then I got to know James and his friends, and she… didn't have a reason to feel sorry for me anymore, I guess."

"How are things going with them, anyway?—I mean, with James and his gang?"

"Fine," she says automatically, but then she stops and actually thinks about it. If she ever wants to get out of the bubble… "I told you Sirius got suspended, right?"

"Yeah," says Dad, frowning. "Something about him trying to use a Dark spell on his brother?"

Lily nods. "It's been a whole big mess. He was dating Remus, and then Remus cheated on him with his brother, and when Sirius found out, it… wasn't pretty. He tried to rebound onto James, you know, since he knew James had had feelings for him, and—"

"For Sirius? James did? But that's your boyfriend."

"Yeah. Exactly. James had finally started to move on, and then Sirius put him in that position, and he wasn't happy. They only just made up, and only because Sirius lives with James and his parents on holidays ever since he ran away from his—"

She falls silent. If she wants to figure out who she is, she's probably not going to do it by allowing James and the boys dominate all her conversations with everybody else.

"Why do I get the impression," says Dad, "that this all has been taking up a lot of room in your head lately?"

Lily smiles. "Probably because it has been. That's something I've been trying to figure out lately, actually—how to get some distance from it. It's not that I want to break up with James or give up my friends or anything, but…"

Dad sighs. "That's one of the reasons I never would have chosen to send you to boarding school if you hadn't turned out to be a witch and needed to go to one—and why your mother and I didn't send Tuney to one. The environment in them is always very… cloistered, I guess you could say. Insular. It was the same for me when I was your age. It was easy to get caught up in the drama."

She leans in. "How did you deal with it?"

"There's no easy fix for it, I'm afraid—it comes with the territory. Just try to spend time alone when you can, whenever you can get away. Go for runs—read books—hell, you could even write books if you wanted to. Teach yourself to draw or paint. Anything that you can do to spend some quality time with yourself every once in a while."

Biting her lip, Lily says, "I'm not very good at any of those things."

Dad just grins. "Even reading books? Come on. You were a big-time bookworm when you were a kid. They didn't make you Head Girl because you were stupid, now, did they? And just because you're not good at something yet doesn't mean you can't learn. And, you know, I was never much of a runner, either, but I used to go for walks in the evening every day. It's a nice way to just clear your head and think."

Lily shrugs. She's never been particularly athletic—she can still remember how much she hated gym classes when she was in primary school—but how hard can it be to put one foot in front of the other along the edge of the lake or the forest every night? Or—

"I have kind of always wanted to learn how to play the violin."

Dad snaps his fingers. "Mum and I can take you out shopping for one before you leave for school. It might be hard to learn without a proper teacher, but we can pick you up some books that will point you in the right direction."

She nods, a little heartened. "Thanks, Dad. What time is everybody coming for Christmas dinner?"

"Soon, which is why I wanted to come up here. Your mother needs your and Tuney's help in the kitchen." Her total lack of enthusiasm must be showing on her face because he snickers and adds, "Come on, Lils, it won't be so bad. I know you have your issues with them, but Tuney, at least, is in a surprisingly good mood today, probably because Mum told her that Vernon can come for dinner."

Lily wrinkles her nose. "That awful new boyfriend of hers? Haven't we seen enough of him this week already?"

"Play nice, hon. He makes your sister happy, and that ought to be good enough for all of us."

"Even if he's an absolute bore? All he talks about are drills and football, and none of us has any interest in either, not even Tuney."

"Hey, if you want to get even, invite your own boyfriend over here next holiday. He's from a wizarding family, right? I'm sure Tuney will love to hear all about where he's from and what you two get up to at that school of yours."

Lily rolls her eyes. "I can't talk about magic in front of anybody who's not immediate family, Dad. You know that."

She doesn't mention what she knows about Petunia that Dad doesn't—that the root of Petunia's problem with magic is that she's jealous of it. If Lily ever wants to make right with her sister—and sometimes she wishes she could—the last thing she should be doing is rubbing Petunia's nose in it.

Christmas dinner is about as miserable as Lily expects it to be. She spends most of it dodging questions from her cousins about what life is like at the fancy, elusive Scottish boarding school that they're always so suspicious about and trying not to make eye contact with Petunia or Mum. It's not that Mum hates Lily or anything, not like Petunia does, but she still—it's just hard between them when Mum expects perfection out of… everyone, really, but especially her daughters. It's ironic how much it positively kills Mum that she can't boast to anybody else in the family about Lily being a witch, considering how she talks to Lily when there's no one around to look happy for.

It hits Lily like a freight train halfway through dessert that—maybe that's why she's spent so much time burying herself in other people. Maybe she's been trying to get out of Severus and James and even James's other friends what she never seemed to get from her mother or sister.

So Mum and Dad buy Lily a violin and some instruction books the morning of Boxing Day. She's very aware that today is supposed to be the day the big reunion goes down at James's house, but she puts it out of her mind as best as she can. She locks herself in her room; teaches herself how to hold the violin, how to bow, where to put her fingers on the fingerboard; comes out for brunch and to chat with Dad a little when Mum goes out on errands.

She still doesn't have any answers, but maybe there's no great lesson in the sky that she's supposed to be learning. Maybe she's doing it already—living her life—getting comfortable being alone.

By the end of the day, she's taught herself to play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Not bad, she figures. It's not bad.