A/N: Am I going to use this fic as writing exercises now? Yes. Also, I am so sorry that y'all were subjected to my idea of middle school era smack talk. I was not good at it, so I could not write it. Rereading it made me shrivel up inside. I will not be editing though, to preserve the sentimental value of the fic. If y'all also want to focus on one aspect of craft per chapter, let me know in the reviews and I will break the process down and try to explain what I was thinking about as I was writing. This chapter is going to focus more on staging a scene and character actions rather than the dialogue heavy stuff of previous chapters. Also, I know that James' father's name is Fleamont, BUT I want James to be a Junior so he will be. In terms of this fic, Fleamont went by his middle name so now James is James Fleamont Potter Jr. I don't want to hear it in the comments.

(I also realized that I lost the outline to this fic years ago, so I will be making shit up as I go along.)

Disclaimer: Not mine. (I'm actually not sure about if legally I need to put in a disclaimer since I don't profit off this in any way, but like… force of habit I guess).

The rising sun woke Lily from an uneasy sleep. She had spent the night tossing and turning the in queen sized guest bed alone, plagued with nightmares and the horrible thought that her parent's death was in fact, her fault. She could have ignored the letter, pretended she hadn't gotten it, but as always her temper got the best of her. It was always the same with her and Petunia. They would speak without thinking. Words would fly fast and harsh in the Evans household until the fight was over and peace would be restored. Petunia couldn't have meant what she said last night. It was the heat of the moment. It had to be. Petunia was many things, but she wasn't that horrible. Even disgusting old Vernon wasn't that horrible.

Giving up on a restful night, Lily got up, made her bed, brushed her teeth with a cleaning charm, wizard style, and made her way downstairs.

With the shock of everything, she hadn't taken the time to take in Potter's house. She couldn't believe he actually lived there. It looked like something out of a story book. A place where the prince lived. The furniture was so old it had become expensive again. There was a chaise lounge in the sitting area, right under a window that was taller than her whole house. A mahogany bookshelf lined the wall. All the furniture wasn't pointed towards a telly set, but rather the fireplace. Even just by looking, Lily knew that everything in the house was an heirloom.

In the kitchen, Lily heard two voices softly speaking and froze in her tracks. One voice she recognized almost instantly—James. Going to the same school for six years would do that to you. The other one was a woman, harder to place, but tired and worried. Probably his mum.

"But mum—" She was right. There was no joy in her rightness, because James did not sound normal. She was so used to hearing his laughter and his joy and his confidence that hearing him quiet and tense unnerved her.

"But mum nothing, James," the woman sighed. "You shouldn't have gone to that theatre. You shouldn't have been snooping on the order meeting at all. It wasn't safe. We sent aurors there for a reason."

"The aurors still got there too late mum. I couldn't have let Evans face it alone. And I still didn't do enough. Her parents—" His voice broke.

"Jimmy, I know. I know you care about her."

His mum knew that he had a huge giant crush on her? She hardly talked about him to her parents, though Rose Evans had smelled romance even when it was fully one sided. Lily knew what she would say.

Lily look. He cares about you. He even told his mummy. Isn't that sweet? He seems like a good boy, just give him a chance.

Lily's eyes were too red and dry to actually cry again, so she pretended that thinking about never being able to tell her mum about Potter didn't make her want to throw herself off the astronomy tower.

"Dad would have done the same for you," James pushed back.

"James, darling, you don't have to be your father just yet. You're still young. You have the rest of your life to try to be like him. But when your father was your age—"

"He didn't listen to grandmother either," James said, and his mum laughed a bit.

"You really are James Junior," she said, and Lily detected a bit of a smile in her voice. "I just don't want you to feel like you have to take on all of his responsibilities. You're still a baby, Jimmy."

"Mumm!" He exclaimed, mortified.

"I'll come home for lunch. I'll bring us some takeaway." Lily heard her kiss her son right before she came through the door Lily was standing by.

Mrs. Potter was a tall woman, and her height was the first thing about her that Lily noticed. She was thin, and she held herself like a queen, or a noblewoman or an aristocrat. Being a Potter, she probably was some kind of aristocrat of the wizard world. Her graying hair was pulled neatly out of her angular face, and she wore the green robes of a healer, like Madam Pomfrey. The over all effect should not have been particularly maternal, but there was so much love and care in her eyes that she looked like the exact type of person that might have raised someone as overconfident as James Potter. If a mother looked at her son with that much love, there would never be any doubt in his mind that he was loved and valued.

The old woman saw the girl and she melted. Even her sharp nose and high cheekbones and pointed chin seemed to round out as she took in the young redhead. "Oh my poor dear. Did you manage any rest? If you need it, James knows where the sleeping potion is, he can help you."

"I…thank you, Mrs. Potter," Lily stammered, caught off guard.

"I'm so sorry about having to run off like this, dear, but St. Mungo's is nearly at capacity right now. I'll be back for lunch, and please, make yourself at home. Anything that's ours is yours."

"Thank you," Lily said again. She couldn't quite look Mrs. Potter in the eyes because they reminded her of her own parents. They didn't have nearly as much as the Potters, but anything they had was meant to be shared with friends. Mrs. Potter just made her think about her own parents' death a bit too hard.

"James is just cooking up breakfast right now. In the kitchen," Mrs. Potter said, as she floated out of the room. That was funny. Mrs. Potter moved in a way so similar to James—Lily had thought he was a git because he moved as if he was balancing books on his head since he was eleven years old. So had Sirius, and Peter, and Alice, though recently Sirius was making a marked effort to slouch more.

Lily peeked into the kitchen, and James gave her a tired sort of smile.

"Sleep well?" He asked. She shook her head and crossed her arms across her body, this time, less of a fighting stance. If she crossed her arms hard enough she might be able to convince herself that she was being held.

"I… I can get you the potion if you want," he offered.

"I don't want to sleep," Lily said.

"Oh." James went back to searching for something. "The girls had to go home. Their parents didn't want them spending the night away after a day like yesterday," James said. "It's just you, me and the boys for the day."

"Oh. Okay. Didn't Sirius's folks… ask about him?" Lily asked. She was aware that Remus had grown up in a muggle orphanage. He had always been the nicest marauder, and they were study partners. She was aware that Sirius followed James around like a shadow, and with his whole family in Slytherin, she could hardly blame him for wanting to hang around someone decent.

"Sirius's folks…Don't really ask about him anymore. He left home, last year. He's been staying with us. Don't bring them up with him, yeah? Sore area."

"Oh. I didn't know."

"We've been keeping it quiet," he said kindly. "Anything you need to do today, Evans? We can come with you."

"I want to go see my sister," Lily said.

"Are you sure? She seemed pretty angry yesterday."

"Oh yeah," Lily shook her head. "She didn't mean it. She says things in the heat of the moment that aren't that kind, and it's just because she's angry then. We used to fight like cats and dogs our whole lives, but we never meant it."

"Okay. We can go after breakfast. Sirius and Remus will be down soon. Pancakes?" He didn't wait for an answer and loaded up a china plate with three pancakes and fruit and eggs.

"You're not a bad cook you know, Potter," Lily said.

"Thanks. My old man taught me. Potions business, cooking, lots of crossover, you know."

"I never thought of it that way. I can't cook for shit."

James laughed, "Evans? Admitting you can't do something? Darling, I mean this in the best way, but maybe you need to lie down."

She managed a small smile. "Shut it, Potter, or I will never compliment you ever again."

"And that's not a world I could ever live in, is it?" He examined her face a little too intently, and she felt herself go red and look away.

"Those two won't be up for hours. I'll eat with you." He fixed himself a plate and led Lily to the dining table. "Are you going to say the thing again?"

"Grace?" Lily blinked tears back. "I don't know. Mum and Dad always do—did." It was the worst self-correction, and she put her fork down before her lashes couldn't blink tears away and they spilled out over her cheeks. "Did," she whispered and her shoulders shook and she was sobbing before she could stop herself. She buried her face in her hands, trying not to think about the fact that this was perhaps the fourth or fifth time she had gone to pieces at Potter's house. Oh if Lily of first year could see her now.

Did. From now on, her parents would be in the past tense. She couldn't think of the last thing she had told them. She didn't remember their last words. Mark Evans was. Rose Evans was. They were no longer. She couldn't go home and curl up between her parents in front of the telly. Nobody would come kiss her goodbye in a few weeks when they boarded the Hogwarts Express.

She heard a little girl sobbing and gasping for air, and she felt bad for her. It couldn't have been her though. It was never her. She held it together. She was the strong one. She had taken every precaution for her family. The theatre was supposed to be safe.

"Evans—" James didn't stop himself. He pulled her close to him and let her sob into his chest. He gently rubbed her back for a few moments. The other two marauders woke up and snuck past them, making sympathetic faces, taking their breakfast off the kitchen counters.

It took a few minutes for Lily to compose herself and lift her head off Potter's chest. "Hey, you don't have to do anything today, yeah? You don't have to go see your sister today. I'll write her for you."

She sniffled and wiped away her tears. "No, I can't just sit here today. I have to have something…" She swiped at her eyes again. "I can't sit still and think about it. Not for… another month. When we'll be at Hogwarts. Everything is easier to face at Hogwarts."

He nodded. "Okay. Today, we'll go see your sister. I can think of a month's worth of things to do. We can have the girls come over as often as we can. I can do that."

"Thank you, Potter," she said, peeking up at him through her lashes.

They apparated to Petunia's apartment in London, and the older sister screamed when Lily, James, Remus, and Sirius appeared in her living room.

"I told you I don't want anything to do with your kind," she snapped. Sirius made an amused face.

"Petunia, I didn't know about what was going to happen?"

"So I'm supposed to be okay with it? Mum and Dad are gone, Lily. How the hell are you going to go back to the people who did that?"

"There are good people too, Pet. There are people trying to stop them," Lily said, sitting down on the couch next to her sister. They boys stood awkwardly in the corner.

"Fat fucking lot of good they did. You were cursed, and you went down and they murdered mum and dad with that satanic garbage. Lily it is not safe for you to be in that world. They want to kill people like us. They killed our parents. You have to leave. You have to come back."

"And what, Petunia? Turn tail and run because they want me to? Live in this world with no qualifications? I can't come back. I couldn't even get a job here."

"Vernon always needs secretaries at Grunnings. He'll hire you, no questions. I'll make him."

"Petunia, even if I leave and come back, nothing will stop them from coming after me, or any other regular people. I want to do the work to stop them. I want to protect regular people, because this isn't a fair fucking fight is it?"

"What because you're so much better than us?"

"Pet, that's not what I meant."

"You've had such a complex since you got into that school, freakshow. Mum and dad might have gushed about you and been so proud of you but you aren't better than me because you're a freak."

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying I have to go back so people don't come kill YOU! Severus—you remember him right?"

"Yes, I remember freakshow number two."

"Severus is one of them now. He's one of the people coming after people like us. Don't you see? He has it out for me because I didn't want to go out with him in fifth year."

"Us?"

"Yes. People like us, with regular parents. They want to kill us. And he's not your biggest fan and he knows where we grew up. He knows where you live. You are not safe if I don't go back. You have to understand Tuney. You have to!"

Petunia didn't look so angry anymore. "What about you, Lily? I will never forgive you if you go and die. You're my last family member living. If you ever go back to that place and you die, I will never forgive you."

"I'm not going to die," Lily said.

"Are you joking? That's what dad said. Every day he left on a dangerous assignment. And Mum and I just had to sit at home and wait and pray for him. You were off at school. You weren't there. I can't do that for you too Lily. So if you're gone, you have to be gone. Don't put me through that again." Petunia snapped.

"If I'm gone, can I still write you?"

"Once a week so I know you're not dead. But that's it, Lil. Don't make me worry. I want that owl to come every Monday."

"I can do that. I want you to be safe, Pet."

"I want you to be safe too, Lily. If you leave the madness, you know where to contact me."

"Yeah. I do."

"Oh, the funeral. It's Saturday morning. At ten," Petunia said. "That old man organized most of it, but the Reverend thinks they died in a car wreck."

"You lied to the Reverend?"

"Shut up Lily."

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