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A crack woke him instantly from sleep, as effective as ice cold water dousing his half-naked form.
His hand gripped his wand and summoned the tortoise shell glasses, dangling precariously on his bedside table, onto his face.
Sweat gathered in a sheen on the nape of his neck as his heart pounded furiously inside his chest.
In a few moments James would be proud of his instincts, his body poising itself to defend even before his brain had fully woken from slumber.
Turned out, his instincts weren’t needed.
“Lil?” the deep timber of James’ voice rang out in the silence of his bedroom at – he checked his wizard’s watch – 1:30 in the morning.
“Hi,” she said quietly, still rooted to the spot she must have apparated to, standing like she had been caught.
Bemused, James shifted down to his other pillow and opened his duvet in silent invitation.
Without hesitation his girlfriend crawled under the covers and nestled into his chest.
James slipped one arm under her neck and curled the other around her waist, hand slipping underneath her – his – jumper to rub circles at the small of her back.
He felt Lily take a deep breath under him, pressing a kiss to his neck before settling again.
Her own hand snuck up from between them to grasp his at her shoulder, interlocking their fingers and squeezing once.
“This is a nice surprise,” James murmured after a few moments of lovely silence.
Lily didn’t answer.
He drew back slightly to get a look at her face, his earlier confusion rearing its head again but as he opened his mouth to ask a question she pressed her lips against his.
And James lost himself.
Would it always be this way? He wondered. Would the world always disappear to nothingness when she kissed him?
When she first kissed him, lifetimes ago, he thought it was the sheer shock, the pure joy of the act he had waited so long for that muted his senses so completely. When kissing was all they did as they began to date he thought it was the newness, the novelty of it, the desire to never ever take it for granted that Lily Evans was kissing him, James Potter, that drew his focus so exclusively. When they first had sex, that very first time he kissed her while he was inside her, James thought it was the blinding pleasure of this new connection that obliviated everything outside of it.
But they continued to kiss and shag through the year and now James is left wondering if it might just always be the case – whether, for the rest of his life, kissing Lily will melt the fabric of reality wholly away.
As she pulled away James felt a lazy grin tug at his lips.
With his eyes still closed he leant back in for a few more chaste pecks, dotting one to her nose and then forehead in the process.
Her hand untangled from his to sink into his hair, fingers carding slowly through his disarrayed locks.
She was looking at their movements when he opened his eyes.
“Love?”
The term of endearment drew her eyes to his and he saw the world in them, as he always did, but he also saw a sadness that he wasn’t prepared for.
“What’s –”
“I love you,” Lily cut across him.
James paused. “I love you too,” he replied slowly, “but what –”
“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me,” she continued.
James’ heart fluttered in delight even as his stomach twisted with the beginnings of dread.
“I never knew,” she went on, breath hitching, “I never knew I could feel this way about someone. I never knew the happiness it could bring, the happiness you bring me every time I’m with you or think about you or just look at you. Your face, your voice, it brings me so much joy, do you know that?”
“I –” James struggled to fit words past the lump in his throat.
“I thought my life peaked when I found out I was a witch. Discovering that there was magic in the world, how could it possibly get better than that? And it was, it is, wonderful, but it’s also terrible. Magic has a darkness, a price like all good things. I lost a lot of faith in it when I learned that.
“But then you became my friend, my best friend, and then I fell in love with you and I realised I knew absolutely nothing because the greatest feeling, the strongest magic came from being with you. And you have no darkness. Loving you is easy. And it’s better than anything.”
Tears began to pour down her face and James drew her into him once more.
“Lil, sweetheart, what’s going on, why are you telling me this?”
“Because I need you to know.”
“I – okay – but why? Why are you crying?”
“Because I love you.”
She was sobbing in earnest now.
“I love you too,” he said thickly, “but I don’t understand – Lil you’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry,” she pulled away from his chest, ignoring his noise of protest she cradled his cheeks in her palms.
“Don’t be sorry, I just – can you tell me what’s going on?” His hand gripped her wrist.
Lily’s eyes roamed his face before she laid a gentle kiss on his lips.
“Nothing’s going on. I just – now that we’ve left Hogwarts…everything is suddenly so real. I was thinking about our lives, the war, what might happen –”
His grip tightened.
“And I just – I just needed you to know all of that.”
They stared at one another.
“I’ve known magic my whole life,” James said eventually, slowly, seriously, “And I’ve known love forever as well. I thought they were simple. You say loving me is easy, but I think loving you is hard. Loving you was hard when I thought you’d never love me back and loving you is hard still because the cost of losing that love is a price I can’t pay. You – you’re everything.”
He was babbling and he knew it. He didn’t know if any of what he said made sense but it seemed to calm Lily.
She shushed him gently when emotion overwhelmed him.
And then she leant in again to kiss him.
They kissed and James moved his hands to her waist, under the jumper with purpose.
The garment came off and was tossed onto the ground.
Lily rolled on top of him and kissed her way down his body.
“Fuck,” his swear vibrated in the quiet room.
He rolled them over again, removing his girlfriend’s bra and knickers.
“James,” she whimpered, as his mouth moved over her chest and down to where she ached.
Time passed, cries rang out, and James pushed inside her.
Breaths and moans and the sounds of their love making filled the air, their bodies moving in well-learned harmony – slow, drawn out, intimate.
They fell together, exchanging heated words of encouragement as they rocked against each other.
Minutes passed with James a dead weight on top of her. He made to pull away but she stopped him, curling her legs back around his waist and moving her hands, one into his hair and the other trailing up and down his back.
“Wait – just – just a few more minutes,” she whispered next to his ear.
James shivered.
Eventually he pulled away and out of her, reaching for his wand to clean them and cool the bedsheets, knowing she would struggle to sleep in the warmth they created.
He settled on his side and drew her back into his chest, arm curling around her stomach.
“We’ll be okay, Lil.”
And with one last I love you pressed into her skin, James fell asleep.
October 1979
JAMES
James shot up from bed, body drenched in sweat, heart seized in a tight fist of panic.
He clumsily fumbled at the bedside table, snatching his glasses up and shoving them onto his face.
He looked to his side and found the bed empty.
Touching the sheets, he found the spread next to him cold.
Panic pulsed along his bloodstream.
It was just the dream. He willed himself to believe it.
Even so, as he hastily pulled on some joggers and a T-shirt, his eyes scanned the room, fearing seeing that damned letter placed so neatly next to his Puddlemere jumper.
Neither item was there, but it wasn’t enough confirmation.
James barged out of his room and down the stairs into his family living room.
Much had changed since the days of his dream.
His parents no longer slept in the room along the corridor and the then burgeoning war had fledged fully and gone.
Potter Manor was now an Order safehouse when it had once been a family home, was now full of weary fighters rather than a loving father, mother and son, was now witnessing the drawing up of plans to get the post-war world back on track instead of the cooking of Monty’s special Sunday breakfast.
James stepped into the living room, an open plan lounge that shared its space with the kitchen.
He scanned the room, cursing how busy it was – full of Order members doing their best to pick through the rubble of their society in the wake of Voldemort’s defeat.
James nodded tersely to the handful of morning greetings he got, eyes still darting every which way.
And then he heard it, a voice he’d recognise anywhere.
“Let him sleep,” she was saying.
James made a beeline for her, rounding the corner where she stood by the kitchen island, red hair falling messily over her shoulders, wearing his Puddlemere jumper and her old primary school hockey trackies he transfigured to fit her summer of sixth year when he visited Cokeworth.
She looked beautiful, James forgot she was his again.
Forgot that she had left and come back, that she was here to stay, that she’d promised to never go again.
As he stared at her, rendered still by remembering all of this, she caught sight of him.
Her face lit up and he moved towards her – a moth to a flame.
“I was just talking about you sleeping beau –”
He cut her off with a bruising kiss, sinking his hands into her hair, grasping tightly at the strands, like if he could grip them tight enough he might be able to imprint her physical presence onto his skin.
Don’t let me forget again .
He pulled away roughly and Lily blinked slowly up at him.
“Well,” she said, breathless, “That was quite the good morning kiss.”
James crushed her to him, his head cradling the back of her head as he pressed her face into his chest.
“James? Are you alright?”
“Fine,” he whispered, kissing her hairline before letting her go and stepping back.
Lily looked confused and reached her arms back towards him.
He took hold of her hands to halt their path, giving them a quick squeeze before murmuring about finding Sirius.
He turned away from Lily – her eyebrows furrowed in concern – hearing her ask him whether he needed breakfast as he walked away.
James shut himself away in what used to be his mum’s second pantry and tried to catch his breath.
She’s back, she’s here.
Repeating the mantra over and over, hoping its message and rhythm would steady his pounding heart, James stood against the door shaking.
Go back out there, reassure her, stop punishing her .
He rubbed down his own face angrily, frustrated that a mere glimpse back into the past could hurtle his whole being into that moment again – the worst of his life.
He hadn’t had that dream in months, not since she came back.
He hated it, but it filled him with an ugly bitterness, a resentment he had fabricated back when it was the only way he could cope with the utter heartbreak of losing her.
He had to hate her to function, so he convinced himself he did.
That was James at his darkest, at his lowest, at his worst. That wasn’t who he was and it certainly wasn’t who he was now. She had crumbled that carefully constructed farce the second he had laid eyes on her again two years after she’d disappeared.
He still loved her and somehow she still loved him too.
And then they saved the world.
Everything was supposed to be better. But the past was still there, coming back to hurt him, making him hurt her.
Angry tears stung his eyes and he wiped them away furiously.
LILY
Lily didn’t know what in god’s name was going on.
James had avoided her all day after his bizarre greeting and now Sirius was acting strange too.
Neither of them were particularly forthcoming with answers.
Every time she approached James he simply brushed away her concern, told her everything was fine, moved from her quickly.
When she went to Sirius for clarity he simply told her to talk to James.
It was infuriating.
Not least because she knew something was up and she also knew very well that pinch of pain in James’ eyes.
He was keeping something from her and that something was hurting him.
She would be damned if she let his refusal to let her in stop her from soothing whatever he was feeling.
Determined, she set off to find him.
Thankful for her many past days and nights wondering Potter Manor – both before and after – she scoured every nook and cranny of the place.
Euphemia’s second pantry, the dusty music room, Monty’s old brewing lab, the broken downstairs loo and even the broom cupboard that liked to disappear and reappear at will.
Finally, she heard James’ voice drifting from his dad’s study.
Creeping closer she recognised Sirius’ as well.
Just the two people I need to sort out , she thought, but the sound of her name stopped her just shy of barging in and knocking their two heads together.
“Lil’s worried about you,” Sirius said.
She heard James sigh. “I know.”
“Are you going to talk to her?”
Silence.
“Prongs, is it – did you have the dream?”
More silence, loaded thick with tension, and then James’ reply – quiet, pained, small.
“I thought I’d lost her again.”
Lily’s heart clenched.
“I thought – fuck, Pads, I thought I was back there, waking up to find her gone.”
She heard Sirius shift closer to him. “She’s back, Prongs,” he said gently.
“I know , I know she is, but it was – it was hard to believe this morning. It felt so real – you know what that stupid fucking dream does to me. And I couldn’t stop myself from thinking, from fearing…”
He trailed off and quietness engulfed them once more.
“That explains the PDA at breakfast at least.”
Lily couldn’t see James, but she had a feeling he didn’t even crack a smile.
“It makes me feel angry at her.”
This admission was quietest.
Lily felt her heart crack.
“Mate…you need to talk to her.”
“No,” James said, Stubborn Voice, “No I’m not going to put that on her. We’ve spoken about it, worked through it. Just because I’ve had a stupid dream doesn’t mean I need to put her through more of my shit.”
“James –”
“No, Sirius. It – it really hurts her. She tears herself up for leaving and I don’t want her to feel like that, like this. I’ll get over it, I just need today to get my head back on straight.”
Lily’s heart broke.
Torn between running to her room for a cry and bursting into this one to hold James and never let go, Lily stood outside the door trembling.
“You can’t keep something like this from her, mate. What happens the next time you have the dream? She’s worried sick about you and you say you’re trying to protect her but you’re shutting her out and that’s just hurting her in a different way. Wouldn’t you want her to talk to you about this if the roles were reversed?”
Fucking hell, when did Sirius grow a braincell?
“Fucks sake Pads when did you get so reasonable?”
Lily had to hold back her snort.
Tiptoeing quietly away she made it to James’ childhood bedroom, the one they now shared, the one she left him in two years ago.
Sitting on the bed and staring at the spot where she stood when it felt like her whole life was ending, she let the tears that had built up while she listened to James and Sirius spill.
It did hurt her, to remember the bleakest days of her life and to think about the devastation she caused the only man she had ever loved, but Sirius was right.
It hurt her too to think that James was trying to keep this from her.
They were partners and he couldn’t shield her from important things no matter how prattishly noble the reason.
She’d tell him so. And then she’d bring him back up to this very room and not leave until no part of him could ever again doubt her permanency in his life.
JAMES
Dinner was a wholesome affair, cooked and served expertly by the Prewett twins, an old favourite of their mother’s they said.
James was feeling calmer than he was that morning and Lily’s solid presence next to him at the enlarged dining room table helped.
Sirius’ words echoed in his head and he felt the discomfort in his gut that told him his best mate was right and that he could have handled things better today.
Lily was chatting softly with Emmeline Vance across the table, smiling kindly at whatever she had to say.
Merlin he loved her.
Even the faint lift of the corners of her lips was enough to breed warmth through his chest.
He’d been unfair to her today and he’d sort it out. But she was here, sitting next to him at dinner and she’d be heading to bed with him soon, falling asleep in his arms, waking up to his kiss.
How desperately had he craved these same simple truths when she was gone? How many nights had he woken up reaching for her in bed to find it empty? How many times had his heart broken as it relearnt that she had left?
And now she was back and he shouldn’t go a day without relishing the fact that she was sharing the same 24 hours with him.
James rested his hand on her thigh and stroked his thumb over her silky flesh.
Lily turned to him and smiled softly before turning back and replying to Emmeline.
James’ hand stayed there all through the rest of dinner.
Later, when the two of them retreated to their room Lily turned to him, looking serious.
“Can we talk?”
James nodded, pulling her to the bed where they settled sitting side by side, turned slightly towards one another.
He opened his mouth to try and explain himself but before he had the chance to utter so much as a word she cut across him.
“I overheard you and Sirius talking earlier in your dad’s study.”
It gave him pause, that was not what he was expecting her to say. And then he started to panic, unsure what exactly she had overheard.
She seemed to read this on his face because she barrelled on quickly.
“I’m not upset or anything. Well, I’m not mad. I am…sad that you felt like you couldn’t talk to me about it.”
“Lil –”
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I just…James…” she paused to take a breath. After a beat, gently, she went on: “You know that I love you for every good thing about you, every laugh, every single thing you make brighter and better.”
James stroked his knuckles down her cheek.
“But I also love you for every dark thought, every upset day…every bad dream.”
James closed his eyes, reaching out to her waist to drag her closer to him so that her legs ended up stretched across his lap.
Lily reached up to cradle his face.
“I love all of you. So it doesn’t matter if you think you might upset me or whatever. I want to know.”
He kissed her, because he couldn’t not; she was perfection, the light of the sun itself, and he loved all of her too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I should have spoken to you this morning, I just – I had this dream. You heard me and Sirius, you’ve probably guessed what it was about. The night you left.” James trailed off, looking at Lily in his arms. He nudged her nose with his.
“The dream – nightmare really…it used to be a recurring one. When you first – when you first left I relived it every night. And every morning I would wake up expecting to find you next to me and –”
He looked away from her, breath caught somewhere between his chest and the open air.
She turned his face gently back towards hers, kissing him on the cheek and giving him a gentle smile to implore him to go on.
James took a deep breath. “And when you weren’t there I would remember – I’d remember waking up that day and finding your letter and my jumper which you confiscated from me right when we first started dating and never gave back.
“And it would send me straight to that moment again. That moment when I – when I felt like I lost everything.”
He grew quiet, eyes focused on the spot on his desk where he found that parchment two years ago, his name in black ink and familiar cursive, a perfect circle just to the right where the paper had been discoloured – a teardrop shattering on impact.
“I’d remember feeling like I couldn’t do it, couldn’t go on. Fuck, Lil, I had never felt less like fighting in my life.”
She pressed her forehead to his cheek, sniffing just once.
“But I had to do it, had to keep going, had to fight. It was – so fucking exhausting to grieve you at the same time. So I – I started to focus on feeling angry, on feeling betrayed. And it was easier. It was easier to go out and face Death Eaters when I was angry – at you, at them, at the whole shitting mess of the world.
“So this morning, when I woke up from that dream…well it just sent me right back to that place. And it was like I wanted to find you and bring you back in here and just stay locked in our room together all day, but I also wanted to curse your name and hex a Death Eater.”
The image of James screaming her name to the heavens and then sending stunners at Voldemort came to her mind, so incredibly bizarre in the midst of this heart wrenching conversation that she couldn’t help it.
Lily giggled.
And after a second in which James’ body tensed, he began to chuckle as well.
They looked at each other–two tired, tear-stained faces–and continued to laugh.
James drew her impossibly tighter against him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
Lily shook her head as she threaded her fingers through the hair at his neck.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I know we’ve spoken about it, but you’ve never told me about the dream. I – I want to know about these things, James. I mean it. I hate that I made you feel that way but…I’m in this for the long run. I hope you are too –”
James scoffed. “Evans I’ve been planning my proposal to you since Fourth Year.”
She beamed.
“Well then,” she said, still smiling, “You need to be honest with me so we can work through things properly, together. I promise to do the same.”
Unbearable softness bloomed over his face. It spoke to an ache in her chest, a well of love and desire and care that she wanted to tip into James’ cupped hands. It belonged to him. She belonged to him, with him.
“Okay,” he murmured, thinking that a handful of painful conversations in the midst of a whole lifetime with Lily was so much more than he once ever dared hope for – a dream, a better dream, come true.
October 1981
Lily and James enjoy Halloween with their friends after two years of peace.
They mark the occasion with a feast and roaring fires and floating pumpkins.
Harry James Potter goes red in the face with delight trying to catch the coloured puffs of smoke his daddy conjures for him.
Firewhiskey is brought out after Lily puts her baby to bed, an appeasement to Sirius who passionately fought against being separated from his godson.
The group laugh well into the night, not forgetting to toast the friends and family they lost.
The next day, Godric’s Hollow stands as it did the day before, a touch messier than usual perhaps, but nothing a swift series of household charms won't fix.
Little Harry wakes from sleep in his cot unscarred and is greeted by the arms of his father, a kiss from his mother.
They start their day as they start every day now – with hope, with love, and a hearty breakfast – their long future shining bright and beautiful and free ahead of them.
June 1977
LILY
Lily turned gently in her boyfriend’s arms so she could look at him, peaceful in sleep.
She traced the lines of his face with her eyes, astounded for the thousandth time by his beauty and willing herself to memorise every last detail.
She tried, as well, to record the feeling of lying here with him, something utterly unique – some intoxicating combination of happiness, comfort and safety that was far too dangerous at the moment. Far too tempting.
Her body screamed at her as she disentangled herself from him.
Stay, it implored, stay.
Don’t leave, her heart bled, don’t leave.
You’re losing everything, her eyes wept, everything.
Except she wasn’t losing it, she was giving it up.
Lily looked at her sleeping boyfriend – the only boy she had ever loved – and felt her body tense as it warred between staying and going.
The fantasy of crawling back under the duvet, rewrapping herself in his strong arms, burying her body in his unending warmth, played out before her.
It would be wonderful.
And it would be a death sentence. Her blood put a bright red target on his back.
She was going to save James Potter from herself.
He had been right, loving was not easy.
Loving him, at this moment, was excruciating.
And he had been right too when he said that there was a price to pay.
James would never meet that cost, he would rather die than lose her.
Conjuring the letter she had written him in explanation, she placed it gently on his desk.
She gathered his Puddlemere jumper from its crumpled heap on the floor and folded it next to her words. A single tear imploding as it hit the parchment.
She returned to the spot she’d apparated to and cast a silencing charm on herself.
He wouldn’t hear the crack of apparation when she left nor the broken sound of her weeping with abandon as she took one last look at him.
Lily Evans couldn’t live in a world in which James Potter died. There was a price to loving him and she would pay it.