By the time Lily had entered the boys' dormitory, Eilidh hadn't even touched the box. With her head in her hands and the box at her feet, Eilidh sat at the writing desk in front of a wall of pictures Lily was never supposed to see. Every time she had been in here that wall had been covered up with bed sheets, now she understood why. But now was not the time for curiosities nor the time for annoying warm feelings about James Potter.

In all the years Lily had known Eilidh, there was only one problem that she didn't face head-on, and that was her family. So, it didn't come as a surprise to Lily when she walked into the boys' dormitory to find Eilidh sitting at the desk, her box untouched, with a blank and far away expression. To her benefit, she probably spent the entire time she had been alone trying to motivate herself just to cut through the packaging tape.

Eilidh hadn't started when Potter had knocked on the door, nor did she look up when Lily walked in. Lily wondered at how to make her presence known without startling her friend. She began with softly clearing her throat, then when that didn't work she gently said, "Eilidh?"

She started, but not as much as Lily thought she would, and swiveled the chair around.

"Hey." Her smile was not ingenuine which was a relief because Eilidh was truly okay and their petty arguments hadn't done permanent damage to their friendship.

"What're you doing?" Lily asked. She moved to lean against the writing desk. Those pictures really were distracting.

"I'm… I don't know," Eilidh admitted.

"Do you actually want to open that thing?" Lily asked, gesturing to the box with her foot.

Eilidh started fidgeting with her fingers. "I should," she said, her voice a little shaky.

"I asked if you wanted to," Lily reiterated. Eilidh bit her lip as her eyes started to water. She looked down trying to hide the fact that she was crying and took a deep breath.

"Could you just open it for me?" she asked the chair. "It's just so much worse not knowing what's in it. I don't know why."

"You don't have to explain." Lily knelt to the ground, scratched up a bit of tape, and hesitated. She was a bit nervous herself now. What could Eilidh have gotten from her muggle father that could be so bad? It was best to just rip it off like a band-aid.

The sound of the tape ripping off the cardboard box filled the room at almost a deafening volume. Lily flicked the tape off her fingers and flipped the boxes lid open. She looked up at Eilidh who was looking down at the box like it might have been her father's corpse.

"Who's that from?" Eilidh whispered, pointing at a white envelope placed carefully on top. It was the only thing that wasn't covered in a thin layer of dust. Lily wondered how long this box had been packed before they sent it.

"There's no return address." All that was written was Eilidh's name in feminine cursive. Lily placed the letter in Eilidh's outstretched hand. She tried to look around the black plastic clothing bag that sat on top but she couldn't see anything save a corner of what she assumed to be an embroidered photo album. She didn't want to move it without Eilidh's permission so she sat in silence and waited.

Eilidh face was impassive as she read through the letter then folded it and placed it back in the envelope when she was finished.

"It was from my grandmother. He left my uncle, his brother, the house, his car to my cousin Tommy, and me everything else," she said. "I kind of wanted the house," she laughed humorlessly. "He was there, you know?" She shrugged, trying not to look disappointed.

"You're not ungrateful just because you wanted his house. That was your home too," Lily said, knowingly.

"Yeah, I know. Anyway, this is just the stuff that was left after they cleared out the house," Eilidh said, looking out the window past Lily. "They sold all his clothes and stuff and put the money in his accounts. Which I'll get when I come of age."

"There are clothes in here," Lily told her, pointing to the black bag. "At least I think."

Her eyes snapped down to the box. "It's probably just the clothes I left there. My grandmother said they sold everything."

Lily could tell she was trying not to get her hopes up. She could only wonder why Eilidh wanted her father's clothes so much.

"Well you never know until you open it," Lily said, encouragingly. She picked up the bag, it was heavy, too heavy to be whatever Eilidh would wear during the summer.

Eilidh nodded and slid out of the chair to sit next to Lily.

She unzipped the bag revealing a brown leather jacket with wool lining the collar. The airplane printed on the back was slightly faded but otherwise, it was kept in pristine condition. Eilidh sighed in relief when she saw it.

"He was in world war two. He would be so pissed if they had sold this," Eilidh said, running her hands down the orange lining. A patch of the British flag was sewed roughly onto the sleeve and the zipper had been fixed by inexperienced hands. Apparently, he didn't trust anyone else but himself touching it.

"I didn't know he was old enough to be in the war? Didn't you say your parents were pretty young when they had you?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, he lied about his age, and they were desperate enough for people to allow it," Eilidh explained.

"Some really bad things happened to them, Eilidh," Lily said. All of her life she had heard horror stories about things that happened in the war, it would have been terrible for something like that to happen to someone not even old enough to sign up, and the fact that the government had allowed it happen.

Eilidh smiled at her understandingly. "He was always really proud of himself. He said that if he hadn't done something, it would have been his biggest regret," she said, zipping the jacket back in the plastic bag. "Besides, he wasn't the only one, a bunch of his friends from school went and did it with him and all but one got in."

Lily clenched her jaw. This was all hitting very close to home now. She couldn't count the number of times she had heard someone saying that it was their duty to fight in the war, Eilidh herself had said it, in one way or another. And maybe Lily had believed it too but she had the sense to wait until after Hogwarts, when they were of age, and could only hope that her friends would have the same sense because Merlin knew that she wouldn't be able to convince them should they make up their minds without her.

"Let's look at the rest of this. All this talk of wars is…" she didn't have the words for it, mostly because she didn't want to admit that she was afraid. Eilidh reached out and squeezed her hand.

"We're different," Eilidh said. "They got split up. We'll stick together. Always. No matter what," she vowed.

Lily's heart rose to her throat. While Eilidh's kind words were meant to be reassuring, Lily was filled with nothing but dread. It made her wonder what happened to her father's friends. What would happen to her friends if - when they went down the same path? She opened her mouth to ask the question but the words seemed to be caught in her throat. So she let Eilidh dig through the box with a sort of bittersweet smile, watched as she pulled out photo album after photo album, several books on either psychology or chemistry, and silently prayed; to what or who she didn't know, she didn't even know what her prayer was about, she just kept saying, 'please, please, please.'

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