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It starts the day on the train. Or, it ends. It ends on a half-said word, lips unevenly parted, fragile hope breaking on the racing winter ground.
It starts in seventh year.
Act One
“I like crying to strangers,” she tells him on the first afternoon they properly talk—face to face in the Transfiguration section of the library after six years, in September, the books for their partner project sprawled on the table between them. “They can’t see me, so it’s easy.”
James Potter is the opposite of easy, and he’s the opposite of non-seeing. It unnerves her how he never looks away, how his eyes always seem bright, how he directs all of his attention onto her, whether or not she’s speaking.
Maybe that would make him a good person to cry to. In another world, where they’re…something else.
She realizes what she’s just said—to her sort-of-civil-enemy, in the library—and her cheeks flush red. She leans back in her chair, not having realized that she’d begun to tilt forward. (He’s like gravity, is the other unnerving thing about Potter. It’s so hard to resist his pull). Lily clears her throat. “So, Minkowski’s theory on animal Transfiguration—“
“There’s not a lot of strangers here,” Potter says and he’s still not looking away. There’s something considering, measured, almost pained in his brow. “Small school.”
Lily’s fingers fidget for a second, then she picks at the peeling spine of one of the books with her thumb. “Maybe I do my crying outside of school.”
“Save it up for three months?” Potter almost cracks a grin, and if it were any other year, any other version of herself and version of him, she’d think he was making fun of her. She doesn’t jump to that conclusion—rather, she hovers, stumbles, waits on the edge of something. “Merlin, you must be quite emotionally repressed.”
Lily stares at him, then she can’t stop the laugh. Fuck, he’s made her laugh. “Oh, Potter,” she sighs and she’s smiling, shaking her head, in September in the library with a boy she once made a searing vow to hate. “You have no idea.”
Interim
October dawns, breaks, ends. It brings rain, falling leaves, friendship. It ends in firelight and the common room, a bottle of Firewhiskey and the company of the four most unlikely boys to grace her life.
Sirius has taken the longest to warm up to her—he’s suspicious, slow to warm to change, viciously jealous of anyone who steals a modicum of James’s attention—but she thinks there’s a grudgingly accepting quirk to his grin now whenever he looks at her. Remus and Peter just smile, knowing, as if they can see something she can’t. Or rather, something she’d prefer not to see.
She can feel the question orbiting the room the entire evening, as laughter makes her throat raw, as the sips of alcohol make her body warm.
She’s draped over the armrest couch, legs sprawled on the cushions. He’s opposite her. The three other boys are on the floor.
“Are you lonely?” James asks her eventually. His voice is soft. She doesn’t even have to add that he’s looking at her—he always is. His hair is mussed, eyes a bit unfocused. His school shirt is untucked from his trousers.
Have I ever not been? she thinks, and wants to say it with an ironic laugh. Wants to watch it ripple into the world and perhaps shift his perception of her, into a mess and a constantly impending crisis from a…whatever she is to him now. But the fire is low, the murmurs of Peter and Remus on the floor soft, and she lets her thoughts settle, ripple softly.
“I don’t want to be,” she says. Her chin tucks down agains the cushions. “I’m…I’m happy, but…I’d like to be…content, too. Known. Not let go of.”
“I don’t think Mary or Dorcas would let go of you,” James says quietly. The firelight dances in his dizzy eyes.
She shrugs, unable to find a real answer to the feeling in her aching chest. She doesn’t want to, not tonight.
Her head tips back, cheek resting on the scratchy fabric of the cushions.
Nights are so impermanent. Happy moments are so fleeting—joining the night for unexpected moments of joy or peace. But the longer they go on, the easier it is to feel it slipping away, to feel the expiration date ticking nearer and nearer. The laughing boys, the quiet, the noise.
There’s another factor in that lonely story though, and he doesn’t like non-answers. James makes a noise, shifts until he can try to look her in the eyes again.
His brow is furrowed tight. “Lily—“ he starts, but he’s a force unto himself, and he’s everything she’s never let herself want—or rather, that she’s wanted until her chest might bleed scarlet with romance and longing, but she’ll never admit it—and she can’t meet his gaze.
He says her name again.
The boys laugh.
She closes her eyes.
The moment unspools, a hairline fracture, a dangling ellipses. James’s tense knuckles remain white, but then his shoulders drop too, and his eyes close.
Lily wonders: how many missed opportunities will I mourn in my life?
Act Two
It’s one matter when someone is reaching out. It’s entirely another when the reaching is stringing muscles, a hand grasping for empty air, for more than empty kisses and shallow laughter. For anything at all.
His knuckles are bruised.
She sits with him in the corridor outside McGonagall’s office.
Unacceptable. Fighting is never tolerated, Mr. Potter, no matter the circumstances.
James exhales; his head tips back and hits the stone wall.
Lily looks at her shoes.
Your detentions will begin as soon as you return from the winter holiday. Mr. Mulciber will also be receiving detentions, though I think it’s best to split the two of you up.
“Alright?” James’s voice is rough.
She nods, though he’s not looking at her. Her thanks bleeds into the stone between them, the cold December air, the silence. The bruised, bloody skin on his hands. His care for her is something. It’s something.
Mr. Potter…you can’t let your temper get the best of you.
He took it silently until then. It’s not temper, Professor. I won’t let them talk about her like that. About anyone.
Lily tips her head back too; she looks at the ceiling.
“Have a good Christmas,” she says softly. “I…” She swallows, the bloody knuckles, the impact, the care, the boy, in her mind. “I’ll see you on the train home.”
When she stands a few minutes later, exhaustion from the day and from eavesdropping and from sitting there with him, his eyes are open. Eyes clear, hazel. On her. “See you, Evans,” James says quietly and his fingers slip along his knuckles, along the fault lines of her heart.
Act Three
She wants him to kiss her on the train home.
He doesn’t. He sits with her. He offers her his favorite book to read, makes her laugh. They both pretend the fading bruises are already gone.
The snow swirls against the glass of the compartment window.
She wants him to kiss her.
James laughs too, temples crinkling, eyes bright. He’s holding Emma in one hand, fingers keeping the pages of the book spread, creasing the spine. “You’re pretty when you laugh,” he says and he grins, like he doesn’t mean anything by it, like it’s just a fact.
It’s snowing. She’s laughing. She’s pretty. She wants him to kiss her.
She blushes, and laughs more, shaking her head. “You’re a liar, James Potter,” she says and she’s smiling. She must have crinkles too. “A fit, funny liar.”
Interim II
Dear Lily,
Merry Christmas! I’ve attached some of Mum’s pies, through they’re a bit more ornamentally…festive, than they are edible. I tried to talk her out of it. (Bite with caution).
I finished the last of the Brontë books today. I liked Jane Eyre best I think, but Sirius claims she’s just barmy (shoulder-reader. Wanker).
How are you? I hope your sister isn’t giving you too much trouble. Write me if you ever want to…
Interim III
Dear James,
I read your letter during dinner, then my mum scolded me, and I reread it during dessert. The jokes did make me laugh out loud, in case you were wondering. Your career as a blossoming comedian is safe.
I’ve been thinking…
Act Four
She’s always liked crying to strangers. On the playground, scraped knees. On the tube, battered heart. In a garden, full of sunshine and repressed hopes.
She likes crying to him, because he’s good at comforting her. He wasn’t always, but then that comes with familiarity, with being known. With being cared for.
She likes being happy with him more. He’s clever at making her laugh, at knowing just when to push or pull, which jokes she’ll find funny. She’ll never tell him, but as the months go on, as she loves him more, as she grows older, from his friend to his girlfriend to his wife, she’d laugh at any joke he tells her. He might curate the ones he thinks she’ll like best, but she just likes him best.
“Kiss me,” she whispers. The train rattles, the winter countryside races past.
His knuckles are clean, cradled in her hands.
James is smiling. The corners of his eyes crinkle and he shifts, just enough to lean down, his eyes on her, flushed cheeks almost brushing his. He doesn’t say, Good joke. He doesn’t remark on how she might cry, just from the sheer relief of this moment. He smiles. “I thought you’d never ask, Evans,” he says quietly.
His lips are soft, warm. The winter outside stubbornly clings, cold and frosty against the windows. The train rattles.
She might love him already.
It starts.