"Er?"
"I guess." James shrugged.
O.W.L.s were coming up quickly; the teachers were piling so much work on them that the fifth years were lucky if they got five hours of sleep. Generally, the common room would be filled with about ninety students at two in the morning, numbly reciting the fourteen potions using bicorn blood or mumbling something about the proper wand movements to Transfigure a chair into a current newspaper. There was also a newly-founded buffet table near the fire—James and Sirius had managed to persuade the house-elves to bring them a never-ending supply of hot cocoa, and then they would add their stores from Honeydukes to the pile.
Easter vacation was hardly a vacation. Lily stayed at Hogwarts, along with all of the fifth, sixth, and seventh years. The sixth years had their N.E.W.T.s to take care of, and the seventh years had a graduation exam, not to mention their Apparition test. Of course, Lily was overworking herself drastically; going off food and sleep in order to make one thousand per cent on each exam and making herself look like a ghoul, as Remus put it.
Sirius approached her one morning; it was four-thirty, and Lily was still trying to find the countries where gillyweed was known to flourish, under what conditions it grew, and how exactly it transformed one's body.
Rolling his eyes, Sirius slammed a mug of hot cocoa on top of her book. "Drink."
"But Sirius—"
"Drink."
She obeyed like a numb sort of pillow, gulping the searing hot drink and feeling it almost blister her throat with its heat. Then, unexplicably, her eyelids started to droop, and she fell forward onto the table she was using as a desk, head on her arms, and her long red hair tumbling everywhere. Sighing, Sirius slipped his arms underneath her, and, picking her up, carried her to her dormitory.
He let her fall onto the bed gently, and, after he'd slipped off her shoes, pulled out a small blue bottle from his robes.
"Sleeping Potion—should last twelve hours. Good. She needs that. I don't think I've ever seen anyone that cares as much about her grades as she does."
He almost ran into Remus outside, who was a bit curious as to where Sirius was dragging a sleeping Lily.
"Sirius? What's wrong?"
"I figured this was necessary. She's hardly sleeping at all."
Remus nodded. "Wise. No one overworks as much as she does."
"My thoughts exactly."
"We're not supposed to be up here, though."
Sirius grinned. "We're the Marauders. Have rules ever stopped us?"
"No," Remus admitted, "but the Head Boy might."
"Oh. True."
Silently, Sirius swung the door to Lily's dormitory shut, and, tiptoeing down the stairs, managed to leave the girls' side of the Tower before the current Head Boy caught them sneaking around and breaking another couple of rules. He, unfortunately, was a Gryffindor, while the Head Girl this year was a rather shy Slytherin. Which really meant that Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff could get away with much more than their fellow Houses. So far, Sirius, James, Remus, and Peter had refrained from inflicting bodily harm upon him; the only thing they had done was the Full Body-Bind and the Stunning Charm. Lily was surprised they'd held back so much.
When Lily woke up, she was surprised to find herself in her bed. The last thing she remembered was Sirius handing her something to drink—and now, judging by the clock, it was almost dinner-time. She groaned, sat up, and immediately fell back onto the cushions.
Lily fell into a sort or half-doze till the door opened to reveal a house-elf and Remus. The house-elf scuttled out quickly after setting down a tray on Lily's lap, while Remus sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Lily?"
"Hm?"
"Here. Have something to eat—you look dead on your rearend."
"Gee, thanks."
"Well, you're not exactly on your feet. Have some apple pie." He pushed the dessert plate over to her, and she started attacking it ravenously.
He let her finish off the steak pieces, the baked sweet potatoes, the creamed peas, and the kidney pudding without interrupting; it was only when she had, with a sigh, pushed the tray away from her that he ventured a remark.
"Are you all right?"
"Sure. Fine. Couldn't be better."
"I mean, how tired are you; how hungry?"
"I'm kind of tired, and I'm stuffed."
"Relaxed?"
"Well---I guess. Thanks, Remus."
"For what?"
"Er—well, making me go to sleep—but do you think you could hand me that Herbology volume?"
"Oh, no!" Wand out, Remus Banished the book to the other side of the room. "You. Need. A. Vacation. Badly."
Lily scowled. "Remus, I want to pass my O.W.L.s, for screaming out silently!"
"Lily! You're going to pass them with two hundred per cent already! Stop, I beg you! This is going too far! We know you're smart, but this is frightening!"
"Then don't pay any attention to it!"
Remus sighed and dug around in his pocket for something; he pulled a mirror out and held it in front of Lily's face.
"Look."
Lily obeyed. She wasn't surprised at what she saw. The rings around her eyes she had gotten used to, and the wrinkles underneath them weren't that hard to see—the tangled hair she hadn't had time for lately. "So?"
"So we can't not pay attention to it! Look at you—this is terrible!"
"I don't care what I look like, and since no one else does, I don't see that it matters."
Remus frowned as he tucked the mirror away. "You're a hopeless case."
"Thank you."
"That wasn't a compliment."
"I know."
Scowling, Remus banged the door of her dormitory, running into someone outside. This running into people seemed to have become a habit, he reflected.
"James, watch it!"
"Hey, I'm sorry. I just came to check on Lily. I know she was doing too much—and—well, I wanted to see if I could do anything."
Remus sighed. "She's hopeless. Still thinking that we're trying to reform her into obsessing about her hair, and the only thing I did was point out the circles around her eyes. I mean, wouldn't you know what I was referring to if I'd said that to you?"
James frowned. "Remus, buddy, we did put her through quite a bit in third year."
"We? I would put that more in terms of you."
"Er."
"True?"
"True." He sighed. "Still—I think it might do her good to talk a bit—do something—oh, I don't know. She needs to get away from the books for at least an hour every day."
"James, in case you didn't notice, she did sleep beforehand."
"Yeah, something like two and a half hours a night."
"True," Remus admitted. "Well. I guess, that if you want to put up with Padfoot's teasing—go ahead, talk to her."
"You don't think he'll refrain from doing so, do you?"
"No."
James sighed. "I thought not."
Remus meandered slowly down the stairwell while James pushed Lily's door open.
"Lil?"
She raised her head from where she'd dropped it on the pillow. "Hello."
"Feeling better?"
"I never was sick."
"You were tired, though."
"Oh, well. I'm not anymore. Hand me that Herbology book over there behind my trunk, will you?"
"Oh, no." James sat down on her bed. "Oh, no. Absolutely not. You've got to rest."
Lily was growing impatient. "James, it's not as if I'm a deathly sick skeleton with triple pneumonia. Get me the book."
"Lily!"
"James!"
"Lily Evans!"
"James Potter!"
"Oh, bleeargh."
"Spurgle."
He snapped his head up. "What?"
"I thought that'd gain your attention. 'Spurgle' was what I said."
"Er."
"Ermph."
"Huh."
"Humph."
He broke the train of odd noises. "Say, you going anywhere over the summer?"
Lily shook her head. "Petunia and my father need me at home."
Frowning, James fiddled with the end of a blanket. "But hang it all, they can't ask you to be a mother and wife to them! You've got to have some free time, don't you?"
Lily smiled indulgently. "James, our situation at home is rather different from yours. We don't have house-elves to wait on us hand and foot—we've got to work for our money."
"I understand that, but still—"
"James, I'm the only one in the house who really knows how to manage. Petunia's learning, but she learns that slowly. And my father always used to depend on my mother for things like budgets and monthly payments on the house. I've got to help them."
"Oh." He gave in. "I don't suppose you'd like to come visit us once in a while?"
"Oh, there's no question about that; of course I'd like that—" his face lit up—"but the question is whether I can or not. And the answer to that is, decidedly, no."
"Er—I guess—all right, then."
"You understand?" She ran a frail hand through her hair.
"Yes. I'm sorry—I didn't really understand."
Lily smiled. "Potter, the last thing I want is sympathy."
"Oh, fine. Say—" he cast an anxious glance around the dormitory—"you up to visiting the A-thing place anytime soon? I never really got to see it—so I was wondering."
Lily laughed. "Oh—I guess—maybe. Only if you promise not to drown me or kill me in any other way you can manage to think of. I want more dignity than to be accidentally killed by a pillock."
"Hey!"
"And I'm not going before I finish the O.W.L.s. Live with it."
"Sure. I wasn't expecting you to."
"So we're agreed on that?"
He grinned, sticking out his hand. "Of course, yeah, for once!"
She laughed again as she shook it, though she almost fell out of bed, seeing that he was seated at the far end of her bed and she had to reach clear across it.
Though Lily didn't, by any means, stop studying, she did ease up on it, sleeping almost regularly and going to meals. True, she brought her books down to the Great Hall and wouldn't let anyone interrupt her study, but still, she was eating. James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter themselves were studying almost frantically—especially James—his mother had threatened to cut his ears off if he didn't get at least a dozen O.W.L.s.

Easter break passed much too quickly for anyone, including the teachers, and very soon it was the third week before school let out; one week before exams. Nervous and jittery, everyone from fifth year up had relinquished all activities except studying—Lily even heard James voice the opinion that he was glad they weren't doing anything related to Quidditch; that the matches that year had been canceled, because this way they'd had more time for studying. It was the strangest remark Lily had ever heard to come out of James Potter's mouth; obviously, the rest of the common room agreed, judging by their bug-like eyes and the flapping mouths.
Lily was flipping through the sixth of seven Defense Against the Dark Arts encyclopedias outside, next to the lake, one afternoon, with several rolls tied up in a napkin, when a shadow fell across her book. She ran her eye over the last sentence on the page, then looked up.
"Yes?"
Severus smiled. "Hello. I haven't seen much of you lately."
Lily slipped the corner of the napkin inside her book, shutting it and placing it on her lap. "I know—it's just the exams—the O.W.L.s—" She stopped, making several irrelevant hand gestures. "I mean—you know how it is."
He nodded. "Yeah—I know. Well, I guess I came over here to ask, in case I forgot later—I wanted to know whether you were going to visit Lucius—or me—this summer."
Lily frowned. "Severus—I don't know. James asked me that, and I told him I had to stay at home, because of my father, but I guess I'd have to see."
Severus sat down next to her. "Sure. I don't have to have an answer straightaway."
Slightly smiling, Lily reached her hand out, dipping it in the lake, and then flung several droplets over the calm surface. They both sat there in silence as the water rearranged itself in a still sheet of silvery blue-green.
"Say—Lily?"
With an effort, Lily detached her eyes from the glittering lake. "Yes?"
"I wanted to ask you this for some time—well, you haven't spoken to me much lately."
She shrugged. "We've got exams coming up. I've been studying."
"I know. And every time I see you, you're buried in Volume Thirty-six of Sixty on Extremely Rare Spells that are Extremely Useful in All Sorts of Situations or something like that. But still—I don't know—you've been around Potter and his friends a lot lately. That's not why you don't want to see either me or Lucius over the summer, is it?" His gaze was almost painful in its pleading.
Lily was rather taken aback. "Severus—what on earth gave you that idea? I should think you know me better than that! I've got more respect for my friends than to let myself be cajoled out of them by a couple of prats."
He sighed; a sigh of relief. "Good. I was worried there for a bit."
Smiling, she elbowed him in the side. "You're not anymore?"
"Nope. Thanks."
"Sure. Anytime."
"Coming to see us over the summer?"
"I said I'd see! Listen to me for once, my friend!"
"I do!"
"No, I mean really!"
They were both in much better moods when they parted; Severus going back up to the castle and Lily re-opening her book and taking a bite out of a biscuit.
That week sped by so quickly that it seemed like merely seconds had passed before the one hundred and forty-five fifth years were herded into a section of the Great Hall to take the Ordinary Wizarding Levels. Placed in every other seat, they were first given a long Transfiguration paper to answer, and then three essays to write.
Lily was one of the only ones to be relieved at the short answers; she had gone over them so many times that she could practically recite the two books she had used for extra reading in Transfiguration. It took them until lunch to finish, and when they did, no one wasn't glad of the existence of ice-cold pumpkin juice, chocolate ice cream, and other cold dishes the house-elves had prepared.
After lunch, they had to stay in the Great Hall, and, one by one, they were called into a room off of the teacher's table to perform a tricky bit of Charms; bewitching a desk to whistle a tune and dance around the room; bonus points were given for the amount of figure-eights the desk did and whether or not the song was rather intricate and hard or simply "Mary Had a Little Lamb". Lily, having the Queen of the Night's first aria running around in her head, blocking out any other thoughts, had the desk sing that, while gliding across the carpet as if on ice skates. Professor Flitwick was very pleased; he gave her a large grin as she exited the room.
Others didn't do as well, however; Elspeth exited the room with a rather greenish tint to her face. It seemed that the desk had gotten out of control and had done a double flip, wrecking itself and a portrait frame.
That day, everyone felt as if something very large had been taken off of their stomachs; something in the line of iron weights. Next day's exams were going to be easier; Professor Cauldwell was giving them ingredients to make a potion with from memory; some of the ingredients they needed, some were just there to confuse them. They were to be making an Advanced Draught of Sleeping Death—the one the legendary queen used to try to bury Snow White alive. It had been interesting for Lily to learn that the old Muggle fairy tales had been rooted in wizarding legends—the poisoned apple was actually possible, under the circumstances.
The afternoon was rather dreary; Professor Binns had prepared a long stack of questions on goblin rebellions and the treachery of Cleopatra's trusted magical advisor, among other things. The Great Hall was stuffy and sticky with suppressed yawns and trapped air; the tall windows on either side of the long tables had been shut and barred; the reason for that being that the open windows might cause distraction.
Not even several secret Alohomoras from James, Sirius, Remus, and Peter all together, pointed at the same window, did any good. Dumbledore had obviously thought ahead.
Relief overwhelmed each and every one of them as they sat down to dinner that night; out of their main subjects, only Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, and Astronomy were left—the Ordinary Wizarding Levels didn't extend to extra classes such as Care of Magical Creatures and Divination, though the N.E.W.T.s did.
The fifth years got more sleep than usual that night—Defense Against the Dark Arts was the only class they would usually worry about, but Professor Dorvan was a wonderful teacher. She had managed to fix the things she taught them so unshakably in their minds that not even Peter could forget them. No one in Lily's Defense Against the Dark Arts class would ever forget how to tame a dryad after the disastrous occurrence Peter had with their teacher.
Professor Dorvan, the next day, had prepared an obstacle course along with a sort of scavenger hunt inside and outside the castle. They had to start at the beginning of a deserted corridor, and make their way down it, on their way gathering the information they would need to survive underwater for fifteen minutes, besides fighting several creatures, including their teacher. Once at the end of the corridor, they would go through several doors, till they opened one that opened straight into about the middle of the lake; the water was held back magically. They had to swim up to the top of the lake, getting rid of the hinkypunks and other annoying little creatures.
It was quite exhausting, and not one person was unhappy to find themselves safely under Madam Pomfrey's supervision at the top, where they would be instantly dried and presented with a flaming hot brew that made smoke come out of their ears and noses. Lily couldn't help but think that they resembled a cabinet full of steaming teapots.
It would have been rather comfortable on a cold, wintry day, Lily reflected, but when they were under scrutiny of burning rays from the sun, it was less than delightful.
Herbology, held in the greenhouses, involved repotting several bushes that shot fireballs out of their blossoms. Points were taken off for the amount of burns a student had, and points were added for the amount of blossoms a student could paralyze.
No one was happy with Lily when she cleverly froze the organs of the flower that produced the fireballs, thereby effectively disabling it of its weapons. In fact, if she had gloated about it instead of ignoring it, she would have been unanimously hated by the class.
Astronomy consisted of two parts; one involved the calculations of the movements of the stars in the so-far undiscovered wings of the Milky Way galaxy and pointing out their location on the thirty-first of October, 1981, besides determining their size, shape, and color. The other part took place on the top of the Astronomy Tower at midnight, seeing if their calculations were correct, besides locating several stars and pinning down their exact location. Even Lily was frazzled when they finally dropped off to sleep at one-thirty in the morning.
But when they woke up, it was blessedly over—no work, no exams, no anything except lazing around for the entire rest of the week and the next one, till their exam results came out. No one could possibly be more grateful that the exams were over than the fifth, sixth, and seventh years; when the younger students complained of the wracking difficulty of such and such a problem, the older students took a great pride in sniffing patronizingly and saying that that wasn't anything; just listen to what they had had to do for Transfiguration, and then they'd take a great pleasure in seeing the mouths of the smaller students drop.
The castle, sticky and hot and stuffy, was abandoned by all but the teachers, who were grading the exams. The entire lawns were filled with bodies lying in the grass, reveling in the splashes of lake water the giant squid squirted out at them.
Of course, James, Sirius, Peter, and Remus weren't going to lie in the grass along with all the rest of Hogwarts; the first day after exams, they had dragged Lily and Eva to the Forbidden Forest, where, undoubtedly, it was much, much cooler, along with being a bit more exciting. Eva was terrified, and she was extremely glad when she could return to the castle for dinner. She couldn't understand Lily and the boys, who seemed to enjoy Stunning waist-high spiders, and then would go off looking for more to attack.
Of course, Lily, on the other hand, couldn't understand Eva's queasiness; after all, as she said: "They're just spiders!"
Eva would shake her head, as if giving up entirely, and she would continue her tirade consisting of the things she'd do to James' owl if they let any live spider get near her, which, of course, ended in the boys piling the Stunned and dead bodies of rather large garden spiders next to the rock she had taken refuge on.

Far too soon for Lily's liking, it was time for them to pack their things and leave Hogwarts—James had asked her if they could wait till summer to visit Tom and Litharelen, as he had heard from his father that the Ministry was going on another raid near the end of June, and he didn't really want to be caught in the middle of it. Rather reluctantly, Lily had agreed, for she didn't want to leave her family for several hours without explaining where she was going, and this was the most convenient time.
But she had to live with his request, and she had to admit to herself that she liked the Alendoren Cove better when the air was quiet and smoke-free, and she could ride Svordsja through the friendly waves without bringing her steed in any danger of death, injury, or captivity—that is, more captivity than she was already in, which really wasn't much. Lily spent the time she would have spent with Svordsja in the Hogwarts kitchens, getting recipes from the house-elves for Petunia to use at home. The house-elves were delighted.
They spent a good day stuffing their things into trunks, and when they boarded the Hogwarts express, she was rather edgy about what she would find at home. She was only fourteen—well, almost fifteen, but still, she wasn't ready to run an entire household with not much help. However, trying to ignore the worries that were pushing her shoulders towards the ground, she squared them with a smile, pretending to the best of her ability that nothing at all was wrong.
It seemed she succeeded quite well—no one except Severus noticed that anything was wrong, and that was only because he had walked in on her when she was alone in a compartment on the train, hugging a book of her mother's tightly against her chest. He had no idea how grateful she was when he didn't make a point of it; simply sat down next to her and stared out of the window till she felt the tenseness leave her body.
When he saw that she was all right, he brought her to the compartment of several of his Slytherin friends, and they passed an extremely enjoyable afternoon with food from the cart, Exploding Snap, chess, and Gobstones. Lily had been named the champion of chess when they arrived at Platform Nine and ¾, and it had become a sort of challenge to see who could get rid of the most of her pieces, since beating her was almost impossible.
She said goodbye to her friends as she wheeled her way through the barrier; on the way out she caught sight of Mrs. Potter—James had said something about quite a number of people visiting his house over the summer. The lady about twenty students were flocking to had long, straight black hair that fell to her waist, and deep violet-blue eyes that made her son's look rather pale. She wore amethysts in her ears and on a chain around her neck; a silver ring with a deep purple amethyst that must have been worth a fourth of Gringotts' vaults adorned the ring finger of her left hand. Her robes were a plain black; though she managed to make them look wonderfully stunning, something the Hogwarts students found practically impossible to do.
Lily averted her eyes and bent her energy towards pushing her trolley through the barrier, at which point in time she was greeted with her father's smiling face and her sister's rather tired countenance. Her father took the trolley from her and loaded the car with her trunk and Alisande's cage and occupant, while she and Petunia occupied the passenger and back seats.

Lily could tell that Petunia had been under quite demanding circumstances lately, but that she was relieved now. Petunia knew that Lily was better at handling the house than she was, and she rather resented that, but she nevertheless was quite glad at seeing someone who knew how to manage. Among other things, it meant that she could go out more with Vernon Dursley, the boyfriend she hadn't thrown over yet.
Lily spent the first few days at her house with the vacuum cleaner, the mop and brushes, the washing machine, and the window-cleaner as her best friends. Petunia obviously tried her best, but she had had schoolwork to do and hadn't been able to give the house a scrubbing-down, which was what Lily was stuck with. But the week after she returned home, she was so far advanced as to be able to set sticks of incense out to get rid of the headache-causing scent of the cleaning materials.
Her father, she knew, was grateful for a change in the meals he was served. Beforehand, Lily had had only so much time at home to write out recipes, and they weren't very hard to follow. But, thanks to the willing house-elves, she was able to paste several hundred bits of parchment with spidery writing inside a notebook she kept hanging from a nail in the pantry. It included several of her own additions; stuffed peppers and Swedish meatballs among the rest.
Lily's father left for work regularly at eight, and at that time, after cleaning up the breakfast dishes, Lily and Petunia would grab their swimming things and head for the neighborhood swimming pool. Lily couldn't help thinking how much more she preferred her friends' marble basins and stone statuettes to the chlorine-caked tiles, but it was water, and that was really what mattered, she told herself.

Her birthday started out quietly; she rose and took a bath at six-thirty, threw on a pair of pants and a shirt, whipped downstairs to boil water for coffee, and pulled bread and eggs out of the pantry and refrigerator. When the water boiled, she set the filter filled with the ground coffee over a pot and let the water flow through the filter; letting the finished coffee flow into a cup for her father. Taking it to his bedside table, she shook him gently, wafting the aroma of the brew towards his nose.
He sat up in bed, stretching. "Lily! Thanks, honey…oh, and happy birthday! I'm sorry—I meant you to sleep in—"
She interrupted him. "Dad, it's all right. Really, I enjoy getting up this early. Breakfast in ten minutes." She sped out of the room quickly, dashing downstairs and cracking the eggs in the pan, also tossing in about three slices of bread.
As promised, her father's breakfast was ready in ten minutes, and as he sat at the table in his dressing-gown, gulping down coffee, she was occupied with watching several black dots outside the kitchen window quickly grow larger and larger. She jumped back just in time to let about five owls drop presents on the table and into her father's toast.
"Dad—"
He interrupted her. "Blasted owls! Can't your folk get any simpler way of delivering mail?" Then, seeing the hurt look on her face, he amended. "Sorry, dear. It's just that I'm not used to this—er—this sort of delivery. I'd like my toast free of—oh, wrapping paper! Hon, your friends sent you birthday gifts, go on, open them!"
He cast a glance at his watch and stood up abruptly, almost knocking the table over. "Sorry, Lily. Have to go. Very late."
Without waiting for a nod or a sign of comprehension from Lily, he left the kitchen, leaving Lily a bit sad, and a bit confused; neither of which feelings she had explanations for. However, she shrugged it off as she moved towards her friends' gifts.
Deciding against keeping them in the dirty kitchen while the remains of her father's breakfast was still on the table, she took them upstairs to her room, placing them on the bed before whisking back to the kitchen to rinse off the used dishes. When she finally got back upstairs to her room, Petunia was already stretching lazily in her bed.
Lily sat down on the edge of her bed, back against her pillow, one foot tucked underneath her, and picked up the first present: a pale cream paper with burgundy ribbon forever twisting itself into interesting shapes and sizes, including a Chocolate Frog and several kittens.
"Remus!" Lily thought before even looking at the card. She didn't know how she knew; it was just the sort of thing Remus would think of. And she was right; it was from the friendly werewolf. Peter's name was also on the card, but Lily was certain Remus had done the charmwork on the ribbon.
Carefully taking off the paper, she uncovered something she'd been eyeing in Flourish and Blotts for the longest time. It was a cookbook with a miniature figure almost like a house-elf inside; it gave directions and helped out when the baker was doing anything wrong, but it could do only so much, being just three inches high.
Still, Lily thought, if Petunia wasn't too frightened to use it, this would be extremely helpful to her and to her father when Petunia was at a friend's house or something.
Laying Remus' gift aside, she picked up the next one; to her from Eva, Amanda, Vanessa, and Miranda. Covered with forest-green paper, it was long and thin, and when the paper was put to one side, it revealed a grayish cardboard box. Opening it, Lily smiled.
It was a broomstick; not the most expensive one—the Silver Arrow—but a Shooting Star. In the card, the girls had added:

I think you should learn to fly on this—it's a disgrace having one of James Potter's friends not knowing how to fly! We shall hate you forevermore if you do not learn! Forevermore! Quoth the raven, "Nevermore"! Can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee! Okay; too much Edgar Allen Poe. It's just that Mrs. Potter's a diehard fan of dear old Edgar, and his poems are tacked up all over the house. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain that is presently waving unnervingly in our window and is making us stop quoting The Raven, of all things. We're starting to hate everyone's owl that is completely black. Urgh.

--US

Lily sighed, remembering her first disastrous encounter with a broomstick, which had resulted in her sporting a nasty bruise on her wrist for a few days, but resolved to try. Tomorrow.
Sirius had sent her a rather smallish present; he had covered it with a lavender-smelling sheet of—well, it looked more like papyrus than anything else. She took a box about eight inches long and two inches wide and thick out of the papyrus, and, on opening it, gave a pleased sort of intake of breath sounding like a gasp.
It was, of course, a replica, but it looked to real to be outside a safe. Sirius was one of the only ones that had patience and understanding for her hunger for other languages, and he had given her a black piece of marble, cut so as to fit in the box, and covered with the ancient Egyptians' hieroglyphics; beneath the carven Egyptian letters were engraved the Greek equivalents.
He had also tucked a slip of paper with the English equivalents of the hieroglyphics, but he knew she would get more out of the Greek. He had also given her a book that taught the structure of the ancient Egyptian language, along with several slips of imitation papyrus. Though, of course, being purchased in the magical world, it was a very good imitation.
Severus' and Lucious' presents came by the same owl; an invitation to spend some of the summer at Severus', a beautiful silver picture frame from Lucious with imitation black pearls decorating it. Lily smiled as she recognized her favorite combination of jewels. Severus, on the other hand, had given her something in the same style, though far more beautiful. Imitation black pearls for her ears, and with thin silver threads hanging from the pearl, forming an intricate pattern of a flower. Lily didn't want to think about the cost of it, and she never intended to ask.
She quickly penned a short reply to Severus and Lucious, saying that she'd have to see whether she could come or not, but that she'd ask her father and inform them the minute that she found out, either way. She saw Alisande take off into the brilliant white wispy clouds, and, when her owl had finally vanished from sight, Lily turned to her last present.
Wrapped in violet-blue paper, the color of his mother's eyes, James had charmed the surface of the present to squeak whenever it was breathed on, apparently. Lily tried not to as she pulled the paper off of the box.
She almost dropped it.
He had obviously worked very hard at this; and it wasn't to be sniffed at. Long, wide, and flat, it was a piece of canvas. Lily didn't know how he'd done it—it was a painting. Done in the duskiest shades Lily imagined existed on a palette, it was of Lily mounted sidesaddle on Svordsja through the waters of the Alendoren Cove, with the pentacorn rearing as two waves clashed underneath her. The dress that she was wearing in the picture was a white, filmy substance resembling a cloud more than anything as it whipped out behind her into the midnight-blue sky and trailed in the sea-blue ocean; her hair was unbound and her feet were bare.
Behind Lily's head, partly covered with streaming dark red strands—he had managed to actually glisten as if they were wet—the moon shone, casting a halo-like glow around her head, and sending a beam to the tip of Svordsja's horns, making a sparkling glow issue from it. Lily caught her breath.
She had had no idea James was this good at painting—no, he wasn't good; he was wonderful. This was better than anything she had ever managed to sketch, ever. And she had never seen anything that he had done—besides this. It looked as if it had taken weeks; maybe a month. She turned the canvas over, and on the back he had penned something.

Lily,

I hope you like this—I tried as hard as I could to do you well—you move so fast and you've always got an odd expression on your face—somewhat as if you're sent down here from another world. I tried as hard as I could to replicate it, but it turned out rather flat. Svordsja was easy enough. I can't possibly imagine doing a creature that grand without making her look—well, fit for Olympus or something of the sort. But you were different. Humans don't usually look like you do. That's not an insult, mind. I wish they all did. Still, this isn't making any sense, really, so I'll stop here—

--James

Lily set the letter down, thinking hard. Her thoughts, as usual, were somewhat odd.
I don't know why he tells me I look like I come from somewhere else. I'm definitely nothing special; I'm more ordinary than I'd care to be. I'm not in the least pretty, I'm only clever because I—I guess I was born liking books and languages, and I've got no special qualities that might make me out to seem like an immortal. I'm eccentric, that's all, though I sometimes wish I wasn't.
It was easy for her to see herself that way—she was hardly ever complimented because she took the compliments in such an odd way; she would stare at the person with a rather surprised and halfway angry expression—and she was told that she was clever by her teachers and by other students that usually needed desperate help with their homework. To be honest, this was the first time anyone, even her family, had told her something like what James had written, and she didn't quite know how to receive it. She didn't know how to receive it now, as a matter of fact, and she had no idea what to write him in the way of thanks, as this certainly deserved something more than a simple Thank you for your present. Yours sincerely, Lily Evans. In the end, besides formulating a rather long letter, she decided on something she'd wanted to do ever since school began.