Underneath this Smile

Chapter 1 Home

I'll be coming home just to be alone

'Cuz I know you're not there and I know that you don't care

I can hardly wait to leave this place

No matter how I hard I try

You're never satisfied

This is not a home

I think I'm better off alone

Home by Three Days Grace

Lily Evans awoke before the sun was even up. She lay in her bed staring at the ceiling for over an hour before she finally decided to get up. Rolling out of bed, she ran her fingers through her shoulder-length dark red hair before putting it up into a ponytail with practiced fingers. She put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt at random and tiptoed down the carpeted stairs of her childhood home. She entered the kitchen and noiselessly poured herself a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee.

Today was the last day before she returned to Hogwarts for her seventh and final year. She was more than excited to finally be going back to school for a number of reasons, one of them being that she was Head Girl this year, which meant that she got to have a separate living quarters from the rest of the Gryffindors. The girls in her year hated her, and the feeling was more than mutual. The past six years had almost been a constant war between her and the rest of the girls, but this year she wouldn't be sharing a dormitory with them, which meant seeing them a lot less. It was easy to ignore them in classes and in the Great Hall, but living with them was quite a different story altogether.

When she had finished her cereal she rinsed out her bowl and set it in the sink. Then she made herself a peanut butter sandwich and sat down again, thinking of some of the other reasons she was glad she was going off to school tomorrow. She would be getting away from her family for another year, for which she was extremely grateful. Her parents had gotten divorced back when she was only a little girl, and she mostly lived with her father now. She saw her mother only occasionally, perhaps only five times a year. Her older sister, Petunia, had moved away three years ago, making Lily very happy. Petunia hated Lily, simply because she was a witch. But after Petunia had left, their father had even more excuse to pick on Lily.

Dean Evans was an alcoholic, and an abusive one at that. He came home nearly every night drunk and would actively seek his younger daughter out to become his personal punching bag. Even when he was sober—which was a rare event indeed—he would still push Lily around. The abuse had started when she was eight, two years after her parents' divorce. Dean had abused Petunia, too, on occasion when he grew bored with his red haired daughter, but that was almost more rare than him coming home sober.

Lily chewed her sandwich, thinking about the night before. She fingered her left eye gingerly, knowing it would be badly bruised now. Once again her father had come home drunk and found Lily seated at the kitchen table finishing up her Charms essay. The events following her father's homecoming were a bit of a blur. She remembered falling to the tiled floor at the first punch, and everything after that was a bit fuzzy.

After finishing her sandwich Lily tiptoed back up the stairs and into the bathroom, closing the door softly after her. She had no desire to wake her dad up, knowing very well what would happen if she did. She knelt on the floor, lifted up the lid of the toilet and sighed, knowing that she was about to feel better. Opening her mouth, she flicked up her middle finger and slid it down her throat until she hit the right spot. Her shoulders bunched up, and her stomach heaved its contents into the stool. Sandwich, cereal and coffee all came back up her gullet, and she smiled in satisfaction. Wiping her mouth with the back of a hand, she stood up and washed her hands, rinsed out her mouth and brushed her teeth. Then she flushed the toilet and went back into her room to start packing her clothes.

A few hours later she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs, and her heartbeat sped up. Panicking slightly, she set down her History of Magic book and got off her bed. Dean was awake. Her panicked mind began running through a hundred or more situations she could possibly find herself in. What to do? Should she go downstairs and say hello? Offer to make him breakfast? Or would that only make him angry? He was bound to have a headache. Maybe she would just stay in her room and hope he forgot she was even there. But what if he was expecting her to come down stairs? What if he got pissed that she wasn't down there now and came up there?

"Jesus," she muttered, cursing under her breath. Finally she went to her door and opened it slowly, peering down the stairs. It was still dark, as she'd expected. With his hangover it wasn't likely that he would use any lights. Perhaps he would be nice today. Sometimes he was like that. Sometimes he even apologized for his behaviour. But that never stopped him from doing it again.

She padded down the stairs in her socks, and found her dad sitting at the kitchen table.

"Open the blinds," he growled at her without even looking up.

"Yes, Daddy," she said obediently, and walked back into the living room, where she opened the blinds on the large windows there and pulled back the curtains. Then she went back into the kitchen, poured her father a glass of water, and took it to where he was sitting. She also brought him the aspirin bottle. He took the bottle and glass of water from her hands without a word, shook out five of the little white pills, and gulped them down with the water.

Lily stood off to the side nervously, not sure what she should do.

"Well? Are you just going to stand there like an idiot or are you going to make some breakfast?" her father demanded, turned round to face her. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes, and he needed to shave. "Are you even listening to me? You stupid, useless girl! Get me some food already!"

She nodded her head quickly, pulled out a pan, and began making scrambled eggs and French toast for her father. She set down a steaming plate of food in front of her father and stood back out of his way again.

He began to devour the eggs immediately. Between mouthfuls he managed to ask, "Aren't you going to eat?"

She simply shook her head, not bothering to tell him that she had already eaten.

He glared at her and cut into the French toast after drenching it in syrup. "That's probably a good thing anyway," he said cruelly, shoving a large bite in his mouth. "You're starting to get fat."

Once again she simply nodded her head without speaking. It was easier that way. When he turned his full attention back to his breakfast she looked down at her stomach. She used to think of herself as rather skinny, but her father had convinced her otherwise. That's how the throwing up started. Plus she was prone to stress eating now; after a session with her father she would usually stay up for hours afterward stuffing her face with any form of food she could get her hands on, and when she was finally done she spent about another hour throwing everything back up. It felt good afterwards, though she couldn't exactly say why.

The phone rang, and Dean got up to answer it. "Hello," he barked into the phone. There was a small pause as the person on the other line answered him. He seemed to be getting angrier and angrier at every word they spoke. "What the hell are you doing calling this early in the fucking morning?" he yelled. "Some people like to sleep in!"

Lily cringed and backed against the counter. She hated it when her father yelled or got angry. She thought about sneaking back up to her room, but thought better of it. That would only make it worse for her later on. After all, she still had one more night of him to endure before Hogwarts.

After a while he thrust the phone out to her and stormed out of the kitchen. She barely managed to catch it before it hit the kitchen floor. "Hello?"

"Hi honey," her mother's voice answered.

"Oh, hi Mom," Lily answered timidly. She hated talking with her mother almost as much as her father.

"I see your father's in a crappy mood this morning," Karen Evans said in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Um, yeah, I guess you could say that," she replied. "I don't think he feels well today." It was a standard excuse she used with everyone who said that about her father. What it really meant was that he had a hangover.

"Well that figures," her mother said. "Anyway. I just called to see how everything was going with you. I haven't seen you in a while."

"Things are good," Lily lied, swallowing as her dad re-entered the kitchen. "I was actually just getting ready to go back to school. The train leaves tomorrow."

"Does it really? How time flies! It feels like I haven't seen you all summer!"

"That's because you haven't, Mom. You've been so busy with work that you said you just couldn't handle a visit from me, remember?"

Silence. She prepared herself for a lecture as her father sat back down to finish his breakfast. "Lily, I must have told you a hundred times that work is really important right now," Karen said stiffly. "I want to be able to afford all the things Roger and I need, and I can't do that and keep track of you at the same time. You know that."

Roger was her mother's new boyfriend. They had recently moved in together. "I know. It's okay."

"I really can't believe that you'd be so selfish as to be jealous of my new life, Lily. Really. You're almost seventeen, for heaven's sake! I thought you would be happy for me. You know how much the divorce hurt me, but Roger makes me happy, and I thought you would be able to respect that. Petunia respects it, and she understands. Why can't you?"

Here we go again, Lily thought, and felt her old anger bubble to the surface. "I guess I'm just not perfect like Petunia," she snapped.

Her mother sighed. "You know that's not what I meant," she said as if dealing with a two year old throwing another tantrum.

"Then what do you mean?"

"Lily, don't do this right now," Karen said, loosing her patience. "I don't want to start a fight."

"Then why do you keep bringing this up? Who says I can't respect your 'new life'? Did I ever directly tell you that I was jealous? I don't think so. You were the one complaining about how I never visit you, but you're also the one who keeps telling me you're too busy!"

"Really now," her mother snapped back. "You're being very immature about the whole thing. I was going to say that you should come to my house for Christmas, but now I think that wouldn't be a very good idea!"

"You're absolutely right, Mom!" she retorted angrily. "I don't want to come to your house, not if you're going to act like this the whole time."

"Act like what? You're the one behaving childishly!"

"Jesus Christ, Mother! You always do this! You always twist my words around and make it seem like I'm this terrible person or something!"

"Watch your mouth, young lady! Just because you're a witch doesn't mean you can just go around taking the name of—"

Lily clicked the off button, ending the conversation altogether. Then she set the phone down on the table, and cleaned up the breakfast dishes.

"So, she said she wanted you to go over there for Christmas," Dean said calmly as Lily scrubbed his plate in the sink. When she didn't reply, he asked, "Are you?"

"No," she replied. "Well, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not."

"You haven't seen her all summer."

"I know."

"It might be nice if you see her once in a while. She feels like you don't love her anymore."

"I know. But she was being such a bitch on the phone, Daddy." The one good thing about Dean was that he didn't care if she cussed. Her mother did. "I don't know if I want to go over there. She's always so busy that she hardly even notices when I'm there anyway, so what's the point?"

Dean didn't reply. Instead he left the kitchen and went to lie down on the couch to sleep off the rest of his hangover. If she was lucky he would sleep for the rest of the day.