this is a disclaimer.

AN: So apparently Lily's read Lord of the Rings. Like, a lot. Title from Coldplay, and I have an uneasy feeling I've used it before. Hmm.

mirror sword and shield

Easter holidays, the last Easter holidays Lily Evans will ever know, and isn't that the strangest of thoughts? She's eighteen now and she turns a teacup into a ferret one day while she's washing up because just a week into the holidays has her almost doubting she ever learned magic at all: home has not changed, Mum and Dad have not changed, her room has not changed, the village has not changed. That Lily Evans who won a scholarship to some fancy school and thinks she's better than the rest of us wanders the dusty late spring streets of her home and isn't better than the rest of them - isn't any different to the rest of them. Her accent changes with her attitude; always, at home, she's more careful and less wasteful than at school.

Petunia, when she deigns to speak to her, does so with a sneer. She's got a job. She's holding her own in the Real World. She's supporting Mum and Dad.

Lily's got a wand and fresh scars she's not told them about and quite a bit of trauma. Mulciber swore blind he hadn't meant to tear her back open, to lay whip-weals across her shoulders from fifty feet away and maybe he wasn't even lying, because Lily was sure that the intended target had been Hattie O'Neill from Hufflepuff. Hattie O'Neill, of the my Dad writes for the Guardian and the you're an arsehole Mulciber and the total inability to back up her clever mouth with her duelling skills. She's a pacifist, and had told Lily so at length one year at Christmas.

Lily remembers laughing at her: even then, especially now. Her counter-curse had flung Mulciber through a solid oak door and ten feet into the classroom beyond before she fainted. She doesn't remember much of the next day, except for Mary's frightened voice and James' hands in hers.

Anyway, Lily wanders lonely as a cloud through grimy streets and past playing fields brown with dead grass and baked, old mud pits. There's the swing set where she met Sev, long before he took part in murderous attacks on shops and homes and turned the Cruciatus Curse on his schoolboy rivals. There's the village shop - Miss Forbes waves to her merrily and offers her a chocolate bar. Lily's fiddling with the Flake wrapper as she meanders past her old school, pausing to watch the boys play football on the tarmac before the gates.

God, it's boring.

(God, she loves watching Quidditch.)

Moving on, tugging at her jumper, which feels too hot now that here and there the sun has begun to shove its way past the clouds overhead. She ought to have worn a short-sleeved top, but Lily carries her wand up her sleeve, trapped against her wrist by the leather band of her watchstrap. It's too tight, she can't slide it out easily.

(And yet that's the point, isn't it - she'll carry it, even here, even now, but she won't admit to herself that she might need it, here, now.)

Janey's sitting on their old bench on the bank overlooking the railway. Lily tosses her Flake wrapper in the bin and sits down beside her.

"Hiya."

"Good of you to come visit," says Janey cheerfully.

"Mum says you got into the poly. That's fantastic - congratulations."

Janey smiles. "Thanks awfully. Where're you headed?"

Lily feels her heart skip a beat under a weight of childhood dreams: she'll fall in love and marry a Prince, she'll be a lawyer, a doctor, a vet, she'll stop the wars in Africa and save the world, she'll go to uni and read English Lit, all her days spent in the sunshine, surrounded by books.

"I don't know yet."

Ain't that the truth.

"Horrid," Janey says, sympathising. "I hate the ones that leave it so late. What are you supposed to do, live in limbo?"

"But of course. Where else?"

Janey laughs.

"I hear Petunia's getting married."

Lily pauses. She hadn't.

"To the Vermin? What dreadful taste she has."

"He's not exactly shaggable, is he?"

For the first time in a week, Lily Evans giggles. "Not exactly, no. Is yours?"

"Gavin? Yeah, not bad."

"Wait," says Lily. "Gavin the Gossiper with the sweaty hands?"

Janey laughs. "He grew up all right."

"Ooooooooh. Gorgeous Gavin."

"Don't scoff, you slag. I saw you at Christmas, buying the Pill."

"It makes my spots clear up."

"It might help if you're looking for a spot."

Lily bursts out laughing. Oh, this feels good. She forgets about the ache across her shoulders and the dull worry in her chest - this laughter right now is the best thing that's ever happened to her. It's such an ordinary, useless, teasing conversation, and it makes her feel ordinary and useless; useless in a wider sense that is, as if she's not one of the most skilled duellists in the school, as if she's not Head Girl, as if she's not needlessly taken this twisted-up responsibility to do the right thing onto shoulders too young for it.

She could stay like this. She could. Skip her NEWTs and come home and cram for a university entrance exam - any university. She's got brains and smarts and talent, she could do anything. She could have that sundrenched life with the books and the beer and the safety.

But as she laughs she tilts her head back and looks up at the sky, shining glorious blue through the grey clouds lifting, and thinks to herself, ruefully, needless were none of the deeds of Gandalf in life.

Janey pats her knee. "What are you thinking?"

"That I have a job to do."

Janey's head turns, dark hair flying in the breeze as it picks up. A mother with her baby in a pram trundles along the path in front of the bench; she nods at them and smiles, not much older than they are. There's a boy coming towards them from the opposite direction with his dog at his heels.

"A good job?"

"No," says Lily. "But someone's got to do it."

What to do with the time that is given to me. She smiles. Go home, pack a bag, go to Seaview. She misses James' hands on her and she's tired of sleeping alone. He'll put murtlap essence on her shoulders and her back, and they'll lie in bed and plot a prank for Padfoot's birthday.

"Mad," says Janey.

"Bonkers," Lily agrees. "Off my rocker. Several hampers short of a picnic. C'mon, you've known me thirteen years. Is this news to you?"

Janey's about to answer when the boy with his dog draws up to them and the great slobbering black beast jumps up and wags its tail at them.

Janey makes a noise that a five year old might when confronted with a toy shop all for him.

"Ooooh, isn't he lovely!"

Lily looks at the dog, and then, wordlessly, she looks up at the boy.

Prongs pulls a face at her.

She looks back at the dog.

"You useless wanker," she says.

Sirius wags his tail at her and licks Janey's face.

Lily puts her head in her hands.

"Is he yours?" Janey tilts her head up to look at James, one arm around Sirius' shaggy neck.

"For my sins," says James. "All right, Evans?"

Janey says "Oooh," again, but there's a distinctly different inflection on it. "Is this the Christmas?"

"The Christmas what?" James asks.

"Shag," says Lily, and if Sirius were in human form he'd be pulling a face and waving his hands at them. Go away, go away, I don't want to hear it. "And yes, it is."

"It seems to be a decent choice," says Janey, looking him up and down.

James blinks.

"Get up off your arse and go find Gorgeous Gavin if you're having urges," Lily says.

"You never share," Janey says accusingly.

Sirius jumps off the bench and burrows underneath it, plainly disgusted.

"Christ Almighty, Evans, what sort of people do you associate with?"

Lily takes a single look at Padfoot and starts to laugh so hard she just about falls off the bench. Prongs is grinning at her, no less amused at his own joke; Janey is just puzzled, poor kid.

"Lily, I wish you'd - oh, bollocks. There's the three-fifteen. Got to go, love, is it safe to leave you alone with 'im?"

Lily wipes at her eyes as the three-fifteen roars past below them, bright green as any train out of the Railway Children.

"With these two?" she says. "Always."

She holds out a hand to Janey, who catches it and squeezes; then she's gone, sliding down the grassy bank behind them without bothering with the steps further along.

Halfway down, Janey Price hears a man's voice - a new voice - say, laughing, "You wretched harpy!", and Lily's laugh rings out again, loud as before. She turns round, surprised: there's three of them up there now, and the Christmas Shag is saying "- ran all the way here from the Harroway at Guildford," which is clearly nonsense because Guildford is miles off, but Lily's saying that a little exercise won't hurt you, Prongs, and Janey shakes her head at yet another bloody mystery hanging over Lily Evans' head. Boarding school, her sorry arse.

Oh well - she loves the silly bint either way.

Lily does go home and she does pack a bag. Sirius perches on the window-sill and James sprawls across the bed while she rummages around hunting up her favourite t-shirts, and when Petunia comes in she's got a handful of socks in one fist and a fag in the other.

"Hallo, Tuney."

Friendly, friendly, please be friendly. Please don't embarrass yourself in front of these two.

"I thought," Petunia says icily, "you were going to grace us with your presence for another week."

Lily wants to sigh. She can't quite manage to - she's been practicing hiding her weaknesses from Petunia for so long she's forgotten she has any - but behind her, the bed creaks as James stands up, and she doesn't need to turn to understand that Sirius has gone very still, the same stillness that takes him before a fight.

"She's gracing us with it instead," Prongs says softly.

Petunia barely looks at him. "Does Mum -"

"I'm sure I can rely on you to relay the relevant information," says Lily.

"You wouldn't catch me up here with Vernon, and we're engaged."

"You astonish me, Tuney - I doubt he's very difficult to keep up with."

Sirius barks a laugh. "I'm sort of curious as to what exactly we're being accused of," he says.

"I take it," says Petunia, "you're from - Lily's school."

"No, I'm from Cumbria," says James. "Padfoot's a Londoner."

Lily works really hard not to grin.

Petunia is unimpressed, and still angry. "Then the sooner you're gone, the better."

"What've you got against Londoners?" Sirius asks, sounding wounded.

To Lily, as if he hadn't spoken: "Mum would never -"

She tosses the socks into her bag and crosses her arms over her chest. "I wouldn't know. She's never said a word to me about it."

"I don't recall you ever having lost your sense of common decency so far before as to -"

All of a sudden, Lily's furious. Fuck her - fuck her and fuck her self-righteous nastiness. There's not a damn thing in the world embarrassing or shameful about what she and James... have done together, any more than her friendship with Sirius - antagonistic though it still sometimes is - is something to conceal or to deny. She's not even sure Tuney truly thinks it is - she's just parroting the kind of reactionary nonsense she hears from Mum's friends or reads in magazines. Luckily for Tuney Lily hurts and she's tired and she just wants to go home with people who love her; it's so much easier to keep her temper like this, or at least to keep her voice down.

"Tuney," she says, "go stew in your bloody juices someplace where they're not stinking up my bedroom. We'll be gone in ten minutes."

She swings the bedroom door shut with the sweetest smile she can muster.

"Charming girl," says Sirius. "Lovely. Sweet-natured, quite the looker."

It's cruel and it's underhanded and Lily laughs, turning, leans against James.

"Bit strict, your Mum," he says.

"She's never said a word to me," Lily repeats. "Oh, let's go. Let's just go. My back hurts and I just want to get out of here."

Petunia waits in the kitchen until they've gone before she slides the knife drawer shut again - how stupid was that, she doesn't really think they'd hurt her, but looking at it made her feel strangely better, as if she were the one doing everything right. She is the one doing everything right. Mr Gordon down the chemist was in here not long after Christmas, I think you ought to know what your daughter's been buying, pompous arse. The only reason there wasn't a row of epic proportions is that Dad gets uncomfortable and flees to the garden when you talk about that sort of thing to him and Mum is more interested in knitting patterns. Petunia isn't sure she knows what the Pill even is. Actually it's a wonder to Petunia sometimes that she and Lily were ever born at all...

Come to think of it, it'll be a wonder if she ever has any children herself, the way things are going. You might call Vernon sensual, but only if you were cannibalistically inclined and had cooked him to a T.

She doesn't even know the name of the handsome boy on the window-sill, but she suspects his more casually good-looking friend is this Potter person Lily mentions so often - and also the reason for Mr Gordon's visit. And Lily herself in her jeans like that - Petunia doesn't remember the last time she wore any kind of trousers. Maybe when she was eleven or twelve. You're a young lady now, ladies don't wear things like this, Petunia. I want you to have a better life than jeans and a shop floor job.

Another conversation her sister seems to have contrived to skip while she was away at that place.

(But he did have lovely hands.)

They get out of there. Lily strips her top off in Sirius' bathroom so James can put murtlap on her half-healed scars, and Sirius sings Rod Stewart off-key in the kitchen while frying bacon and eggs.

"... know I keep you amused, but I feel I'm being used..."

Lily leans against the sink with her hair falling around her face and shakes it out in a curtain of reddish brown, weight on her forearms. James' fingers stroke across her scars; he's humming Rod as well.

"... find myself a rock'n'roll band that needs a helpin' hand..."

"There. Better leave it to dry a sec."

Lily twists to look at him, grinning. "Whatever will we do in here while we wait for that?"

"Don't stand up," he says, "you'll get it all in your hair."

"Prongs!"

How much more of a hint does he need?

He puts his hands on her hips and bends alongside her, mouth by her ear. "I love your hair."

"Fry up!" Sirius yells. "Whatever you're doing in there, stop it. Moony and Peter are due any sec and you'll probably give them both a heart attack."

"Only if you don't lock the door," says Lily to James.

He kisses her earlobe. "It's about dry. I'll get you another shirt."

"I want your bloody shirt," Lily says, feeling sulky.

She gets it.