Lily started unpacking her trunk into the massive walk in wardrobe. The bedroom that she had been given was double the size of her Hogwarts dorm room at school. There was a king sized bed and an ajoining ensuite bathroom. The Potter mansion looked huge on the outside but on the isnide it seemed even bigger.

The house was filled with countless living and entertaining areas, bedrooms, bathrooms and eating areas. There were long, winding coridors, hallways and staircases, all leading to different parts of the house.

After a delicious dinner, made by the two house elves that served the Potteres, James and Sirius met Lily in one of the lounge rooms to talk, as Mrs Potter had installed charms on the bedroom doors that wouldn't let the opposite sex through after 9:00 pm.

"So Sirius," said Lily, "what's going on with you an Mary?" James, Sirius and her were sitting on a couch in one one of the many living rooms. The fireplace was crackling away and they were all well fed and comfortable.

"Nothing!" Sirius said pretending to be outraged but at the same time, a blush rising up hiss neck.

"Oh come on, Sirius you so have a crush on her!" said Lily.

"No I don't! I mean, I'm not saying that I don't like her or anything like that, because I do like her, but I just like her, not like her, like her! If you know what I mean," Sirius bluted out at a hundred miles an hour.

"Oh my God, it is sooo obvious! Gees Sirius, at least try to cover it up a little bit, you're embarassing yourself!" both Lily and James struggled to keep their laughter from bursting out.

"I'm not having this conversation with you anymore," declared Sirius, a definate blush in his cheeks.

"Oooooooooooooooooh, Sirius and Mary sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" recited James.

"Going, going, gone!" declared Sirius as he walked out the door.

"Do reckon he actually likes her?" James asked Lily.

"Yes!" was her reply.

On her way up to bed, Lily saw Sirius walking up to his bedroom. She felt sorely tempted to tease him about his evident feelings for Mary, but her guilty concience decided against it.

"Hey Sirius!" she said.

"Hey."

"Look, sorry about the whole Mary thing -"

"Nah, don't mention it. It was all true anyway." He winked and smiled a cheeky grin before heading a different way. Lily was gobsmacked that he'd just admitted he liked Mary.

"Because she likes you, and I'm not just saying that!" she called towards him.

Slowly, he turned around. "Really?" he asked, more to himself than Lily. This was very odd, as Lily didn't think Sirius had ever doubted whether a girl had liked him or not before.

--

Lily didn't think it was possible for a house to have a breakfast that matched Hogwarts', but the next morning she was proven wrong. After an amazing breakfast, Lily went on a long walk in the extensive gardens that surrounded the Potters' house and read her book. This was the schedule for most of the many days leading up to Remus Peter and Mary's arrival, (Mrs Potter said that Mary was more than welcome to stay).

At the Potters' house, she relt relaxed, peacful, serene. After her parents' death, this was a very rare thing for Lily to feel, though she covered it up in the opresence of others. She thought about them all the time. When the shock, truth and understanding of the horrible situation had sunk in, she'd felt more pain than possibly imaginable, like she was bare, unprotected, like a piece of her had been cruely ripped from her. But she'd thought alot about what it meant to die, and she decided that one day, she would see her parents again. The thought numbed her pain, but didn't get rid of it completely. She still had to live the rest of her life parentless.

Having her friends close by all the time helped. Alot. She didn't know what she would have done if she hadn't been made to laugh. Laughter. The thing that did it. the thing that got her through it all. The thing that held her together. It was magic really, laughter.

Lily's only regret was that she didn't tell her friends earlier, but she'd found it hard to admit, even to herself, that they were really dead, gone, forever.

Having thought long and hard about everthing that had happened lately, to understand everything that had happened lately, lifted a weight off her shoulders. A weight that had engulfed her without her realising it. A weight that had kept her. Now that weight had gone, there was no judging what she could do.

Lily's holidays went on, full of happiness, content, and laughter. She, James and Sirius found multiple ways to amuse themselves before the arrival of Remus, Petrer and Mary.