Chapter Text
January
Lily’s heart aches.
She is stood in the Heads' Offices, half leant on the table behind her, watching as her co-Head goes through the agenda she’s prepared.
Nine days. Nine days he’d been gone. She thought the pain of his absence, and the reason for it, had been bad but this…
Seeing this echo of him walking cautiously back onto Hogwarts ground, limply greeting everyone, staring at the blackboard in class, cutting his food into too-small chunks at dinner, Lily feels it like a cut to the chest.
For seven years James Potter has strutted their school corridors filling them to the brim with light and noise. She’s noticed it, been irritated by it, noticed it differently, admired it and coveted it. And now it’s gone, snuffed out, and she misses it.
For days she has tried to keep a bottle cap on her emotions, not wanting to add to the burden on his heart, but as she looks at him now—hunched, tired, pale—it’s all she can do to stop herself from kicking the prefects out and gathering him tightly in her arms in the hope that she might bring him some kind of comfort, any kind of reprieve.
“And of course we’re changing patrol partners again so check the list on the door when you leave if you haven’t already.” He flips to the next piece of parchment and does a quick scan before sighing.
“I think that’s everything. Evans?”
“Potter —” Lily’s mouth shuts in anticipatory tension at the slimy drawl of Rosier’s voice from the back corner of the room.
James straightens.
Please don’t, Lily thinks, looking at Rosier, overwhelmed with foreboding at what was about to be said, don’t hurt him.
“Just wanted to ask how your visit home was?” The Slytherin has the gall to pose the question in innocent tones.
That absolute bastard —
Lily leaps up from the desk. “Shut the fuck up Rosier.” The words tumble out in a blind haze of anger. She steps half in front of James and glares the shocked pureblood down. When his lip begins to snarl a reply she cuts him off with a sharp this meeting is over, brandishing her wand to make the point stick.
The prefects clear quickly after that, no doubt not keen to drown in the awkwardness of the situation. James doesn’t say a word.
“Prongs —” Remus murmurs when only the three of them are left.
“I’ll see you later, Moony.” A dismissal. Lily sees Remus hesitate before he turns and gives her a pointed look. Make sure he’s okay.
She nods.
A stifling silence engulfs the space when it is just the two of them left. James is shuffling parchment and staring resolutely down at his hands.
“James,” she starts softly.
“I’m perfectly capable of answering questions put to me.” The words are knife-edged. “If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been dealing with the shit that comes out of Rosier’s mouth for seven years now. I don’t need you to jump in and protect me.”
This isn’t the first time someone dear to her heart has shunned her efforts to help them. Breathing is suddenly a conscious task. She takes a step towards him and reaches a hand out, “I know I just —”
James tosses the parchment back onto the table in a heap and moves away from her. The dagger cuts deeper.
“Do you? Do any of you? Moony keeps handing me copies of his notes from class which he’s always refused to do before. Pete is constantly staring at me like I’m some dodgy potion he’s scared will explode. Marlene has hugged me more in the last three days than in all the time I’ve known her. And I’ve known her my entire life. Mary is just being so much, like she’s putting on a show, not letting me get a word in edgeways. And Sirius, fuck, Sirius won’t let me go anywhere or do anything alone. It’s driving me round the bend.” Here he finally looks at her.
“And you’ve barely spoken to me except to butt into conversations on my behalf. You told McGonagall you’d keep doing all the Head stuff when we had our meeting my first day back. You practically bit Dorcas’ head off when she asked if I could help her with Transfig. And now, what? You’re telling Slytherins to fuck off during prefect meetings and threatening to hex them for me? Just — just stop. You’re all treating me like I’m broken and it is driving me fucking crazy.”
Lily’s eyes fill with tears. She steps forward again, curling her fingers around his forearms.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just — I’m trying to help — I don’t know…We’re all just trying to help you James, we love you and you’re —”
She looks up at him. Hazel staring down, red-rimmed golden. Eyebrows drawn together, forehead wrinkled. Lips pushing to form a thin line, breath harsh. A canvas of hurt. She’d repaint it all if she could. Wipe away the pain with a big, flat brush dipped in a fresh can of white. Paint layer after layer until nothing new could penetrate it. And then the colour. All the lightest, brightest ones for him, for the goodness of him. Light and noise. Light and noise.
A deep breath. Words tumbling loose as if carried on a wind, out of her control, something she shouldn’t be saying now. “We love you, James,” a thousand moments in one breath, “I love you.”
Shock piercing through in electric yellow, hope deep enough to burn rippling over his face. And then a terrible yawning sadness. Navy, almost black. And blood is drawn from her.
“I’m sorry, James, I — I know this is the worst time to tell you but I…I do . More than the others, more than anything. And I haven’t been able to speak to you because — because I’m so…” Tears spring free.
Lily gasps. “I would take on all of your pain for you if I could. That’s how I feel. And I have no idea what to do with that feeling. And you — you’re so sad James. So upset. I just — I can’t bear it. So I’m trying to do something that will help you. Anything. James, I would do anything — if I could — I —”
He goes blurry through the ocean in her eyes so she closes them, hands falling loose to her sides.
“Lily —” his voice is cracked. She knows what it means, she pulls away further. But he follows.
His hands are as warm as ever on her arms.
“Lily, you know that I…” She braves looking at him again when he hesitates. The longing on his face is haunting. His hands squeeze her.
“You know,” he repeats, soft, voice unsteady. “But I can’t…not right now. My parents —” He looks sharply to the side, choked. She hasn’t heard him talk about them since he got back.
Lily reaches up to frame his face, gently tugging him back to her. He lets her and she breathes easier.
“I feel like a completely different person,” he whispers, “without them.” Voice hoarse and thick. “You know how I feel about you, you must know, but I don’t have space in me right now. I — fuck, I’m sorry, I wish that I could —”
She goes onto her tiptoes and draws him into her, pushes her face into the crook of his neck, threads her fingers into his soft hair.
“I know,” she says, and she does, “it’s okay, James.” She pulls back to look at him. “I can wait.”
A pearled wave of relief washes over his features and it breaks something loose.
James weeps, and Lily holds him.
February
It’s bitterly cold, the day it happens.
Lily has frozen her arse off every godforsaken Scottish winter for the past seven years, but she’s never felt a cold like this one.
The Great Hall shimmers with the sheer volume of warming charms cast. And even with the aid of magic, students are still wrapped up in their thickest jumpers as they take breakfast.
Lily cradles a steaming hot chocolate in her hands at the Gryffindor Table and is about to take a sip when James plops down into the empty space next to her.
“Hey,” he greets her quietly, with a small but genuine smile.
Her lips curl upwards automatically. “Morning.”
“You alright?”
“Bloody fucking freezing.”
James lets out a breathy chuckle at the reply. “Well you haven’t got your scarf on you madwoman. Do you want mine?” He asks, because he is ridiculously sweet.
She has to stop his hands in their tracks as they go immediately to unravel the gold and red from around his neck, shaking her head and desperately trying to temper her smile.
Sirius suddenly plonks down across from them, declaring that it should be illegal to have Potions in the “frozen over hell hole that is the Hogwarts dungeons” on a day like this.
Breakfast goes on.
Peter is the last one down and cutting it very fine too considering he starts most of his days with a Full English and at least two cups of Builders’ Tea.
“Why didn’t you lot wake me up?” he demands through ragged breaths and pink cheeks.
“Sorry,” Remus replies, clearly not sorry at all if the amusement in his eyes is anything to go by. “Did you not cast an alarm on your wand?”
“Obviously not!” Peter huffs, aggressively yanking his scarf from around his neck.
“Did you run here Wormy?” Sirius asks, grinning.
“I had to! You lot don’t care enough about me to wake me up, I can hardly rely on you to spare me a thought and bring me some breakfast to class, can I?”
James snorts, nudging a mug of tea—just the way Peter takes it—towards the empty place he’s about to fill.
The flustered Marauder mumbles a thank you but, as he goes to lift one leg over the bench, begins to flail wildly as he gets caught against the barrier of his own scarf, taut under the foot of his other leg, before he yelps, swears loudly (and colourfully — Merlin’s saggy fucking balls) and falls in a great heap on the floor.
Mary gasps along with a handful of nearby students who all rush to ask Peter whether he’s okay, to which he grits out an embarrassed and aggrieved: “Yes I’m fine.”
Lily is about to leave her seat to help him when her heart gives a great big thump against her ribs.
Because next to her, for what feels like the first time in an eternity from him, sounds a great shock of laughter.
Their section of the table freezes as they all stare at James, too consumed in his own amusement to notice them as he continues to laugh, no, guffaw, at poor Peter’s expense.
And then they all—perhaps because Peter is clearly fine, but more likely because of their sheer collective relief at hearing a much missed sound—break down in peels of laughter themselves.
They turn hysterical, spurred on by each other.
Peter grumbles about terrible mates as he sits and starts to make himself a packed breakfast.
James calms gradually. “Oh Pete,” he wipes his eyes, “that was amazing.” He’s still smiling, grinning.
Lily looks across at Sirius who seems to be drinking James in. He flits his eyes to her briefly and beams.
The Evening Prophet reports later that the day had broken records for the coldest temperatures recorded in Scottish history. But Lily’s been warm since breakfast.
March
She’s reached the end of her tether.
It’s been a shit show of a day and she is so tired.
All things considered, Lily thinks of herself as a happy person. Yes, there are things in her life she wishes were different—she wishes she saw her parents more, she wishes her sister could love her like she used to, she wishes she didn’t feel like an outsider in two worlds, she wishes her ex-best friend hadn’t betrayed her, she wishes there wasn’t a great big horrifying war on the horizon, she wishes the boy she loved hadn’t just had his heart cracked open by grief—she wishes for a lot.
Most days though, she can balance those wishes against all the good things she treasures about her life, and these things are aplenty.
But there are exceptions. And today is one such outlier.
Most days Lily can find a balance, but when she reads about the slaughter of a fellow student’s muggle parents in the paper at breakfast, disappoints her favourite professor by messing up a potion, hears from her mum about the engagement Petunia failed to divulge and has a run in with an ex-best friend and his foul-mouthed mates — well — even strong witches like Lily crumble under the weight of an assault on all sides every once in a while.
She slumps into a chair at her favourite table in the library, closing her eyes as they begin to sting.
“Thought I’d find you here.” Lily jumps as James drops into the seat across from her.
He’s smiling at her but the expression dims as he takes her in. Concern stitches itself across his features. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah of course,” she breathes, schooling her face quickly.
His frown deepens: “Lil —”
“I’m fine James,” an attempt at a playful eye roll, “I promise.” But she can’t get any more reassurances out because really, she’s not fine, and she wants desperately to curl into his chest and draw some comfort from him, but she refuses to add to the weight on his shoulders.
She musters up a smile that she knows is flimsy and starts to unpack her school bag.
“Lily,” James says, achingly soft. The care with which he says her name makes tears well in her eyes.
His fingertips brush against her hand on the desk.
Looking up, she is bowled over by the tenderness in his expression.
He asks what’s wrong again, and she tries, really, she tries to deflect with a whispered nothing but she’s glass on the verge of breaking and he can see right through her.
James brings his chair around until it is flush against hers, wraps one arm around her shoulders and threads the fingers of his other hand through hers.
Lily sucks in a breath and holds it, afraid that even the smallest exhale might disturb the fragile eden she has found in James Potter’s arms.
He shifts so that his cheek is lying against her head, his lips brushing her temple.
“You don’t have to be okay all the time, Lil.” His voice is quiet and deep. “I know — we all know — how strong you are, but you don’t always have to hold it together. You’re upset.”
Her breath hitches, as if he has spoken her feelings into full power. He squeezes her hand.
“If you’re pretending for me…you don’t have to. You’ve been there for me — Merlin, Lil, I can’t imagine how I would have survived these past few months without you. And you can’t know how much I appreciate that, how much I appreciate you. But I don’t need you to be okay all the time. I want to — I’m here for you. Always. You don’t have to tell me what’s happened if you don’t want to but…let me be here. Let me help.”
She turns her face into the crook of his neck as the silent tears spill over. He draws her in tighter, stroking his hand up and down her arm, repeating her name over and over.
In the quiet of the Hogwarts library, nestled at her favourite table and in the arms of just where she wants to be, the stone of her walls crumble. Lily is afloat in relief, finally exhaling. And it’s James she breathes back in.