Everything Starts out Innocent

Sometimes the warm autumn sunlight will fall across her hair and he finds himself looking at it from the corner of his eye, never directly (for, after all, it wouldn't do to be caught staring), but looking all the same. It catches on a wave, the sunlight, and he can see all the little stray pieces of hair, the fly-aways, that ordinarily he couldn't see. After a time he finds that, for such a little detail, he likes it.

And he likes that sometimes at night she's prone to sneezing fits, and it's so funny to him to see her at the mercy of her sneezing—five, six, seven times before she can talk again, resuming the conversation after blowing her nose embarrassedly. It's such a strange loss of control for someone who is always so very together.

It's a fact, though, that while she's together, she's not always composed. He creates a distinction in his mind, applies it only to her. No one else merits it; for no one else does he piddle with words. No, she loses her composure sometimes, but then—snap! she's back again, all smiles and flashing eyes and spot-timed comments.

He likes that she can tell a joke.

*

In the wintertime he never wears a coat. It always drives her mad, because she can't believe that just a cloak, even a woolen one, can possibly be warm enough. She always wears a coat beneath hers, one of only a few who persists, and watching from the window of Gryffindor Tower she frets to herself that he's going to freeze. But seeing the sun glint off his hair and in his eyes, and hearing his triumphant laugh even from up there, she forgets to fret and just watches.

It transpires that she's watching him a lot. It's easy to hide, though, as he's always the center of attention. So while ostensibly reading a book, she pays half-attention to him, then two-thirds, and then all. Only once or twice is she caught, and he always winks at her like he winks at all the girls. Sometimes another of the boys thinks it's him she's looking at, and she lets them believe it, but it never is.

*

"Fuck, mate, she's been staring at you all evening!"

He snorts. "Don't be such a liar, James. We all know she fancies you."

"Shut up. —Does she really?"

"YouÂ…you didn't know?"

"Never really thoughtÂ…fuck."

"No," says Sirius, "that comes later." He smirks, but after a pause asks, "Was she really staring?"

But James is distracted now. "Sorry, what? Oh—maybe. Oi, Evans!"

*

When James asks her out she says yes, because he's nice enough when he wants to be, and if he'd just stop messing up his hair he'd almost be halfway cute. Later she realizes that his isn't the type to be cute; he's the type to be "attractive" or "somewhat handsome" or "not unattractive"—some way of saying that he's a wonderful person who sometimes she can't stand to look at. His ears are too big, and his hair won't stay down, and he never shaves quite evenly, and his smile is all right but he's got a habit of getting pimples on one cheek and on his forehead and she hates them. Sometimes she tries to force herself to write a list of his good qualities, but when she can only get to six for the third consecutive time, she quits her list-making and resolves to break up with him.

That night, after four months of dating, he takes her up to the Astronomy Tower and whispers as he kisses her, "I think I'm falling in love with you."

*

Just seventeen, he thinks, is too bloody young to be falling in love with someone, and four months' time is too short to do it in.

"You don't even know if it'll last the summer!" he protests. "James, don't be such a—"

"Shut up, Padfoot," his friend says lazily. "You don't know what it's like." But watching James lead Lily from the common room, Sirius thinks that yes, he does.

*

They're sitting in a booth in the Three Broomsticks on the first Hogsmeade weekend of their seventh year, the five of them: Peter, Remus, Sirius, and James and Lily, whose relationship did indeed last the summer, though they spent it largely incommunicado. Lily was with her cousins in Bath for all but a week of the hols—"All of my cousins," she tells them with a horrified laugh. "Twenty-one of them. My mum has four sisters."

"Are they Irish?" James asks wickedly, and Peter snorts, but Lily flushes almost as deeply as her red, red hair and glares at him. Before she can speak (and it's obvious she's going to, with her eyes narrowed and her hands clenched on the table), Remus soothes, "He only meant it as a joke, Lily. You know he'd never say anything to hurt you."

It annoys Sirius to see him leap so quickly to their friend's defense, but when James's hasty apology is cut off by Remus's "Oh, shut up, Prongs. Let's go get some more butterbeer," he forgives him a little. The remaining three of them chat for a few moments about neutral, lukewarm subjects, but then Peter scurries off to talk to some friends of his that Sirius doesn't recognize and he finds himself all alone with Lily and a lump high up in his throat so that he doesn't think he could speak if he tried. James comes back with the butterbeer and he simultaneously hates and loves him, but he has a voice again and the moment is over.

*

The next time she finds herself alone with him, Lily thinks she might die. He's directly across from her this time, and it's all she can do not to fall into his eyes. When she started going out with James, she thought she wouldn't watch him so much, but they're so close together so much of the time that she finds she's watching Sirius more, only she can pass it off as watching James. Now, sitting at a table in the library, waiting for the rest of them to show up, she looks everywhere but him, but after the third time she mistranslates a rune, Lily shoves her homework away in frustration and buries her head in her hands.

There's a rustle of cloth and paper as Sirius reaches a hand towards her, but then from behind her she hears Remus say, "It's ewaz, isn't it?" and Sirius withdraws his hand like it never happened as she sits up and continues her translation, laughing with them about her stupidity.

*

James has grown into himself, Lily sees. His skin is clearer and he wears his hair in a way so that it just covers his ears, and there's a new look in his hazel eyes, less cocksure and arrogant, more down-to-earth and solid. He'll never lose his arrogance, though, and she knows it. She can see it every time he's with the others, see him slipping back into his old habits of unintentionally cruel comments and practical jokes. He almost always apologizes after, with a laugh and a grin that make forgiving him a little easier, no matter who he's offended. There's never any harm done. He tries not to harm anyone, lately, if unsuccessfully, and she appreciates it.

She doesn't realize that he's acting differently because he wants so desperately for her to love him.

*

Sirius sees it, though. He observes more than they think, more than sometimes he wants to. "What'll you do," he asks James, "if she doesn't?"

His friend throws himself backwards onto his bed, sending pillows flying to the floor. "C'mon, mate, let's not even talk about that!"

"Why not?" He asks again because he wants to know.

James takes the last remaining pillow and hurls it at him. "Because I don't bloody want to!" His head flops back on the bed and he takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes tiredly. "Fuck."

Just watching him, Sirius stays quiet. After a pause that stretches only a few minutes but feels long, during witch the only sound is the scritch of Sirius's quill on his Charms homework, James speaks. "I can't think about what'll happen if she doesn't. It's like saying, ‘What if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow?' or ‘What does it feel like to be skinned alive?' You know it'd be awful, but it's so fucking horrible that you can't even imagine it. D'you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," says Sirius. "I can imagine."

This time James sits up and glares. "No, you can't, you bloody prat, I just said that—" He breaks off when he realizes that Sirius is laughing at him.

Inside, though, Sirius isn't laughing, because he's always had a vivid imagination.

*

Maybe, Lily decides, she really does love him. If nothing else, she cares for him. And, well, that's close enough to love, isn't it? It'll do, she thinks, and resolves to tell James as soon as she can.

On her way to find him she brushes past Sirius, her arm against his, the fabric of their sleeves catching together, and there is the scent of something rich and warm and it takes her breath away. "All right, Lil?" he asks her, a curious look in his gray eyes—curious strange, curious unnerving, and she smiles weakly and nods her head. "I'll see you, then," he says, and walks off.

She moves on without a destination, still keeping it in the back of her mind that she might see James, but knows she is content with just wandering the stone corridors of Hogwarts without meeting anyone.

What, she wonders, is love, anyway?

*

He brushes past her again the next week, on purpose this time. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her green eyes widen and hears the slight catch in her breathing. They both keep walking. Two days later he does it again, brushing closer this time, just to make sure he wasn't imagining it. This time he stops, because she dropped her books, and he helps her pick them up.

"Sorry," he tells her.

"It's all right," she says, keeping her head down as she gathers her Charms book to her chest. "Just, you knowÂ…try to be more careful."

With a laugh he says he will, but it's a lie, because around her he's realizing it's hard to be anything near careful. She sets him on edge, and he thinks that the others might soon start to notice. He worries that they might see how he angles for a seat facing her so he can look at her all night, how sometimes he lingers too long when he's giving her a hug, how sometimes he listens too intently when James talks about her. When he lies in bed at night, he imagines kissing her, imagines—

You've got to get over it, Padfoot, he tells himself. You can't do this to James.

The next day he asks out a Hufflepuff girl with red hair and green eyes, but she isn't Lily and in three weeks they've split up.

*

It isn't really fair, but Lily asks the Hufflepuff girl if Sirius is a good kisser. "Well—" The girl giggles nervously. Lily calls her "the girl" or "the Hufflepuff", because honestly she never really bothered remembering her name, and they're not in the same year, anyway.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Lily says.

"No, it's all right." She giggles again. "I guess I can tell you. It's not like we're going out anymore, anyway."

Lily prompts her with raised eyebrows. "So?"

"Oh!" Another little laugh, and she blushes. "Yeah. He's a really good kisser. And, y'know, at other stuff, too, but we really didn't get that far, since we only went out for three weeks."

It's the answer that she expected, but it isn't the one that she wanted. With a thank you, she leaves the Hufflepuff girl and goes back to her dormitory. Irrationally, she hoped that he would be horrible in that respect, the type who kissed like he was trying to eat your face, but it was a stupid hope. If that had been the case, she thinks she could have dismissed non-platonic thoughts of him—after all, who wants to snog someone like that? She knows she needn't have asked the Hufflepuff girl, as there are other Gryffindors that he's gone out with, but she hopes that the Hufflepuff will be good enough not to tell anyone.

That was a stupid hope, too, as two days later it's all over Hogwarts.

"Lily!" James sputters. "You—what—why?"

"Why what?" she asks calmly, as Remus and Peter laugh behind him and Sirius watches with those unnerving gray eyes.

"It's the talk of the bloody school," he grits out. "Janice is telling everyone she meets. Finds it hilarious. I told her it was shite and that she should stop spreading rumors about my girlfriend." Suddenly his look changes to something earnest and vulnerable. "It is shite, isn't it?" he asks. "You don't have any reason to ask something like that, right?"

Oh, she wonders, is the Hufflepuff girl's name Janice? "It's shite," Lily tells him coolly, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining darkly. "And she giggles too much, are you really going to believe her? Everyone knows Hufflepuffs love to gossip about the other houses." She glances briefly in Sirius's direction and their eyes meet, and she realizes that he knows.

*

"Why'd you do it?" he asks her, eyes flashing as he pulls her inside an empty classroom. It's the only place they can talk uninterrupted, where they might not be found. He's got the Map in his pocket in case the others decide to go looking; he's not going to make it easy to find him.

"Because I wanted to know," she says, looking across the room at the blackboard. It must be the Muggle Studies classroom, she thinks, as that's the only reason she can fathom for the homework to read The Tempest, Acts 1 & 2 and Eckeltricity: A Proper Pronunciation Guide to Tricky Muggle Terms.

"And why," Sirius asks, "did you want to know?" He's not going to let this drop; it wasn't just a rumor and he's too involved in this to just let it go. He's interested on his own behalf and furious on James's—it makes him sick to see her betray his best friend like that and sicker to know he's doing it too.

This time she faces him, looking him in the eye. "Because I was curious," she says. A sudden laugh, and then, "But you've asked James, I know."

He's taken aback. "You do?"

She bites her lip. "You did ask, didn't you?" Her voice sounds unsure.

He asked when they were first going out, before it got awkward. "So, Evans," he asked casually. "She any good?" And Prongs thought a bit and said, "Yeah—yeah, she's good." He never brought it up again, though the topic arose from time to time. He took the details, but he preferred to imagine without them, and just knowing that what he imagined might be real, that it wouldn't be marred by a different reality, was enough. "James told you that?"

"No," she admits. "But I thought—maybe—you might've."

"Well," he says nonchalantly, as if trying to brush it off, "I was curious too." Of course he's anything but nonchalant; he's tense as hell. For the first time he thinks that maybe it'd have been better to talk to her in the common room after all.

There is silence. "So that's it, then?" she asks after a while, sounding to his ears a little disappointed.

"It's all we've got to talk about."

"Right," she says, and it's definitely disappointed. She goes to leave and he follows behind her, but as she reaches for the doorknob she flips her long red hair and he breathes in a scent like cinnamon, and it's then he finds that he can't let her leave.

"Don't," he says gruffly, grabbing her wrist to keep her from opening the door, and kisses her.

*

When she tells James that she loves him, her voices trembles a little.

"I don't want to lie to him," she protested.

"Neither do I," he said, and then Sirius laughed harshly. "But it'd kill him if you ended it now. I know it."

It's been four weeks since the first time they kissed, and there have been many more times in-between. "But you can't let James think there's anything going on," he said. "You can't. You have to tell him you love him." He pulled her close, his voice breaking. "I know you can't leave him, but, dammit, I just can't stop."

After that there was no more talking.

So she tells James that she loves him, watching his eyes brighten and his shoulders straighten like a his burden's just been sent to roll down the hill; she says it again, and again, and again, and each time her voice quavers, and when he asks about it, she just shakes her head and says, "I'm just deliriously happy." She isn't, though, and she won't be, and when she gets back to Gryffindor Tower that night she goes straight to her room, draws the curtains around her bed, and cries. At some point she blacks out and she thinks she must have cried herself to sleep, for when she wakes up in the morning her eyes are bloodshot and her face is puffy and she's still in her clothes from last night. One of the girls must have taken off her shoes, for they're lined up neatly beside her bed, and a blanket's been pulled over her. She stays in the room all day, telling them that she's sick, and they're happy to bring her up some pumpkin juice and bread when she asks for it. They bring other things, too, messages from James and from Sirius, but she refuses to hear them. The mere thought of them makes something in her stomach clench and roil.

The next day she emerges, fresh-faced and calm, as if nothing happened at all. At breakfast she kisses James on the cheek but flinches when he tries to kiss her on the lips—"I'm still a little ill," she explains—and ignores the fact of Sirius's existence determinedly.

*

It's been another four weeks now and Sirius and Lily barely talk.

"I can't take it any more," Sirius says. "I can't. Please, Lily, I need you, I want you—"

"And what," she says icily, "about what I need? I don't suppose you could think about that for a bit, could you?"

"Of course!" he tells her too eagerly. "Anything you want, anything you need—"

She slaps him. "You might've thought of that before you told me to tell James I loved him. You might've thought about what was best for James!" She shakes her head. "You're disgusting."

*

"I love you," James murmurs into her ear. "Lil, I love you so bloody much it hurtsÂ…" He kisses her ear, her neck, her lips, and then down, down, down, and he's kissing her there and then he's making love to her while she lies there as tears fall down her face.

*

Sirius finds her in the Muggle Studies classroom, tear-stained and sick. "Make it go away," she sobs. "Just make it go away, I want him off me."

He hushes her, soothes her, and he rocks her to sleep there in the classroom, but he doesn't do that, because when he does he wants to know that it's him she really wants, that she doesn't just want to erase James's memory with someone else. He carries her back to the Tower under the Invisibility Cloak and lays her gently in an armchair in a dark corner of the common room. One of her friends is nearby and he tells her to take Lily up to her room and not to let anyone see or speak to her. "Did something bad happen?" she asks, wide-eyed, and he answers grimly, "Not yet."

James, top-full of happiness, can't understand why Sirius won't speak to him.

*

"You can't not speak to him," Lily says reproachfully. It's been a week and it's the first conversation she's initiated with him in months. "You're his best friend. People are starting to ask questions."

He bares his teeth in a savage growl. "Let them ask. I can't stand to talk to him after what he did to you."

"There's only you to blame for that," she snaps. "If you hadn't said—"

"Dammit, I know!" Sirius roars. "I'm sorry! What more do you bloody want?"

Her eyes narrow. "Don't you talk to me like that," she says shortly. "Now it's your turn to make sacrifices. Stop being selfish. You're his best friend, so start acting like it. Make it up with James. Make some excuse for why you weren't talking to him, but don't you start any trouble." Her expression barely softens, but it does. "Please, Sirius."

"All right." He heaves a sigh. "All right."

*

It's hard for him to be around James now, to see Lily curled on a sofa next to him, looking the picture of a happy couple. It makes him sick to think of him touching her, makes him furious, because Lily isn't James's, she's his.

Lily thinks otherwise. Yet after James asks her, "You and Padfoot—are you fighting? You barely look at each other," she realizes how much it hurts him to see his best friend and his girlfriend (his lover?) at odds. So she extends small kindness to Sirius. They begin to have strained conversations, and as she sees that Sirius is acting the perfect gentleman, the conversations become friendlier.

At a certain point, they become too friendly.

"Stop it," she says viciously. "Stop it! I'm not your girlfriend, damn you! It's over. Why can't you accept that?"

"Because it hurts." His answer's honest. "It hurts to see you with James. I know you don't love him, but—"

Her voice is cold but her eyes are fiery. "You don't know any such thing." He's right and wrong at once: she doesn't, but she knows that she could. "It's not about you. Think about James. Think about me—"

"But I do," he says, his voice breaking. "I think about you and I can't stop and it's tearing me up inside, Lily, because it hurts to see you with him and it hurts when you're with me. I can't win here!"

"I don't think there are any winners," she tells him. "There are only players."

"But when does the game end?" He sounds hopeless.

"It doesn't."

She's talking about life when she says it. He thinks she's talking about them.

*

He persists, catching her unawares one day after she's fought with James. When she kisses him it's an act of resentment; when he kisses her it's almost like triumph. They both know, if they're discovered, it would be painted as an act of betrayal.

Yet Lily, sick of lies, says when it's over that there will be no more. That ends up being a lie, too, because when James comes down with pneumonia they sit together at his bedside, watching him sleep restlessly through the fever. They pour their fears into each other that night. They connect.

Coming back one day from being with her, Remus stops him as they meet in the common room entrance. "You smell rather like Lily," Remus remarks curiously. "That's odd."

"Yeah," says Sirius. "Dunno how that happened."

Remus gives him a peculiar look, but he never mentions it again. After this, Sirius makes it a point to sneak into the Prefects' Bathroom before he goes back to Gryffindor Tower.

*

James, she realizes, has no idea.

"I know we're young," he says, fumbling in his pockets. "And I know there's a war going on. But I—I love you, Lily." His voice is heartbreakingly earnest. "And you love me. And I just think—we belong together. There's no one else out there for me…for either of us." He pulls a little box out of his pocket and kneels. "Marry me, Lily," he asks, though there's no true lilt at the end to make it a question. "Please say yes."

She only blinks once. "Of course I will," she says serenely. "Oh, James, we'll be so happy." She almost means it.

They have been out of Hogwarts for exactly one week.

*

They are married in December.

Snow falls on the small chapel near Lily's childhood home. All the wizards they've invited are discreet, and all her Muggle friends and relatives choose to notice nothing's wrong or out of the ordinary. Petunia and Vernon attend the service proper but must regrettably beg out of the reception itself. No one except Lily's mother tries to stop them.

"Hey," says James. "Where are all your cousins?"

"What cousins?" Lily asks.

"The twenty-one cousins you spent summer hols with before Seventh Year." He raises an eyebrow. "Didn't forget about them, did you, love?"

She takes a drink of champagne and wishes it were stronger. "Of course not. Some of them are here. Some of them couldn't make it."

After the honeymoon she'll tell Sirius, "There are no cousins. I only saidÂ…because I didn't want to have to write him."

*

The night before the wedding proper she spent at Sirius's flat, indulging in the intimacy that inside she hopes they might not have again for weeks or months or ever again, a separation that he both welcomes and dreads deep in his soul, for he is sick of betraying James but doesn't know if he can survive with her not there. He is right to worry; she and James spend two weeks honeymooning in the Caribbean and upon their return are plunged into a war that seems to have grown countless times more deadly since they left. Lily reads the obituaries in the Daily Prophet and counts off the people she knows. When her list of people reaches one hundred after two months, she stops counting. There are only so many funerals she can go to.

It seems as though she barely sees James anymore and discovers she misses him. He's been a constant for the last seven years of her life, and seeing him only for a few hours of eating and then collapsing, exhausted, into bed is strange to her. He wakes up a full hour and a half before she does, at the ungodly hour of five o'clock, rushing off to Auror training before she's even cognizant of her alarm going off. She doesn't see him until he arrives at home twenty minutes after she's gotten back from work.

Lily works for the Ministry, spending her days holed up in a musty library researching any and everything that is asked for. "The junior researchers don't answer to a specific department," her superior informed her. "If anyone tells you to research something, you research it. You're the lowest of the low." The highlight of her day is the hour at noontime when she and her coworkers, two Ravenclaws and a Hufflepuff, can break free of the dust and go to a little café in Muggle London and order sandwiches and tea and forget about the war for a while. She wonders if it's a coincidence that they're all Muggle-born, and finds that she has difficulty not thinking of them by their Houses, though they've been out of Hogwarts for over six months.

One day she runs into Sirius on her way back to the Ministry, a full two months after she's last seen him. "Go on ahead," she says to her coworkers. "I'll be there in a bit." She and Sirius exchange tense hellos, and then he grips her by the wrist and drags her into a dark corner of an alley, casting a Concealment Charm behind them as he shoves her up against the wall.

The war makes you do strange things, they tell themselves. Stress can only be relieved a few ways.

When, ten minutes later, she arrives back at work, no one raises an eyebrow, but the Hufflepuff comments on her slightly mussed hair and picks a bit of dirt off of her shoulder.

*

It's been another two months since he's seen her and Sirius thinks he might just go mad. He's in Auror training with James and the day that he met her was pure chance; he was told to stay home, as he got five broken ribs in the day before, and Healers' magic or not, they weren't going to risk more permanent damage. Take a day off, they said, and when he showed up at training the next morning they kicked him out.

He's not the only one who's been injured; maybe half the class has taken an enforced holiday. James has been lucky so far. The two of them aren't often assigned as dueling or sparring partners, but when they are, Sirius takes delight in pummeling him—or trying to. They're too well-matched for there ever to be a clear winner. He keeps trying anyway. Something inside of him wants to see James bleed.

There are other things that he wants, too. He wants this war to be over, he wants his friends to be happy, he wants things to be simple again, but almost chief of all he wants Lily.

One Saturday morning he sends an owl to her reading simply I need you, and it's two hours later when she arrives at his flat, but she's there all the same.

*

Their lives continue in this vein, and with unwitting regularity, they meet every two months. Later she will look back and realize the patterns in it, but it's staggered enough so no one notices. On rare occasions she and James entertain the Order members at home, and Lily is then so busy that she barely has the chance to notice Sirius save to feel him watching her the whole evening.

It's in August that Voldemort strikes against them. In the midst of dinner at the McKinnons' house, the lamb chops are suddenly displaced by a snake, and all around them are Voldemort's black-robed servants. Marlene McKinnon screams.

She doesn't remember anything after that.

*

In September, James's parents fall ill with VonGuildencrantz's Syndrome while on a trip to Copenhagen. Soon after they return to England, they die.

In late October, James gets a day off because of a broken wrist. They go out and James gets drunk; they come home, and Lily does too.

In December they celebrate their first anniversary.

In January, Lily's with Sirius.

"I'm pregnant," she says to him.

He's afraid to ask, but manages, "Is itÂ…?"

She shakes her head. "It couldn't be. The timing's off—it has to be his." It's so funny, she thinks. She's with Sirius more than James, and yet—

Sirius pulls her close to him as she starts to cry. "Shh," he whispers. "It's better this way, LilÂ…and it doesn't matter if he's mine or not, it doesn't matter, I'll treat him like he's my own," and he wants to believe that this is true, but the rage is strengthening inside, for once again, James has something of Lily's that he'll never have.

*

This time they're dining with Edgar Bones and his wife, classmates of theirs from Hogwarts and good friends, and she tells them she's going to have a baby, and James looks just as stunned as they do. "How wonderful!" they cry. "Oh James, oh Lily!"

They are joyful.

Then there are many flashes of green light and they are dead. She remembers blood and high-pitched, mocking laughter, and someone who she later realizes must be Snape viciously shoving her down and out of the way.

She never thanks him.

*

The baby is born in July, and his hair confirms that he is, indeed, James's son. It won't stay flat even from birth. They call him Harry, for James's father, and Lily kisses her son on the forehead and whispers, "At least you've got my eyes." Otherwise, she thinks, it's as if she's got no mark on him.

James asks Sirius to be godfather. "Who'll be godmother?" he asks, waggling his eyebrows rakishly. "There're some things a chap's got to know before he accepts."

"Whoever you're with in the long-run," says James with a shrug. "But we're not worried about that yet."

The two of them meet eyes across the room and Sirius barks a laugh. "Well. I'll do it, then. And I'm sure that he'll have a wonderful godmother—to match his wonderful mother."

*

And it's true that there will be no one else. Sirius claims he doesn't have time for a love life, but the fact is that he doesn't want anyone else but Lily. He's tried before and knows: for him, there is no one else.

"You're my world," he breathes into her hair. "God, IÂ…"

She raises a hand to his lips. "Don't say it," she implores softly. "Nothing good ever comes of it."

So he doesn't say it, and he never has, for it's always been unspoken between them. Now he wonders whether it's only he who thinks the words. "But you doÂ…" He trails off, uncertain.

Lily kisses him.

*

James strokes her hair as the baby in her arms cries. She's been up all night with her Harry, and he's only stopped wailing for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and starts up again every time she tries to put him down. Her husband has slept the entire time.

It's five-oh-eight in the morning and he's just come downstairs. "You should've woken me," he tells her, a hint of reproach in his voice. "This isn't something you should have to face yourself." He kisses her gently on the crown of her head. "Let me take him, all right? Go get yourself something to eat."

"I don't want something to eat," she says dully.

"Then take a nap. Rest." James holds out his arms for the baby.

She holds the boy close to her chest, prompting another wail of discontent. "I won't let you have him!"

"Lily," he says exasperatedly. "For god's sake, he's my bloody son, too!"

But he shouldn't be, she thinks, and starts to cry herself, shoving the baby at him as she runs out of the room. A few minutes later, as she falls into tear-wracked sleep, she realizes that Harry's stopped crying.

*

"It's the full moon tonight," he tells her through the fire. "James will be out with Moony all night. I can say I have business—I can come over. I'll leave before he gets back."

"ButÂ…Harry," she protests feebly.

He grins, baring teeth. "We won't wake him."

And they don't, moving silently together under a blanket, lit only by the glow of the full moon. All is darkness around them.

*

"Everything starts out innocent," she tells Harry on his first birthday. "You are. I did." Sirius and James come laughing in from the backyard. She turns away from them. "We all lose it, though," she says, leaning close to his ear as if telling a secret. "Some more quickly than others." She covers him up with a light blanket and gives him a kiss. "I hope you get to keep yours, Harry."

Lily joins her husband and his friends in the kitchen where she serves them chocolate cake and blackberries.

*

"What would you do," he asks James, "if she died?"

"I don't know," James says honestly, a look flashing in his eyes of something that might be terror. "It'd be like the world was fucking gone, exploded right in front of me. There'd be nothing for me to live for."

"There would be Harry," Remus reminds them.

Peter adds, "And the war."

It's the last time the four of them are together like this.

*

The Prophecy is spoken three days after they survive an attack in Diagon Alley, an attack that ends with them and the Longbottoms dueling Death Eaters back-to-back. Dumbledore gathers them to him at Hogwarts and speaks the words that will change their lives.

"He's after Harry," Lily breathes, horrified.

"Or Neville," Dumbledore chides her gently. The expression on pale Alice Longbottom's face suggests that she need not be reminded of this fact. "The prophecy is most unspecific in that respect. Perhaps it shall turn out to be neither."

"What should we do?" Frank asks.

The look in Dumbledore's eyes is grim. "Hide."

*

"I want you to be Secret Keeper," James tells him.

The answer to this comes immediately. "No."

"But why not?" Lily cries. "After all, you're—"

He fixes her with a piercing stare. "I'm too close." To James: "They'll suspect me." They don't know for certain that someone's seen him and Lily together, but he's not willing to take that chance.

"Remus, then," says James, and they agree. The next day he sees Remus at their house in Godric's Hollow. It's the morning after the full moon, after a night that Remus spent alone, and Lily is tending his wounds. He sees her bathe his brow and lay a kiss gently on his cheek and the jealousy flares up within him.

"Peter," he tells James that night. "Remus is a werewolf. He can't be trusted."

*

They tell everyone it's Sirius anyway; that's part of their plan. The week before they choose to go into hiding—hiding in plain sight, really—they get news of the Prewett brothers' murder.

"We're all falling so quickly," James murmurs. "He might come after us next." It's a blunt, jarring thing to say, but he's only speaking what they both know. "Fuck, Lily. I'm sorry. You'd never have gotten into all this if you hadn't married me." He shoves a hand through his hair, takes off his glasses and throws them onto the table. "I never wanted us to have a life like this." His voice is almost a whisper. "You deserve better."

Carefully she takes his glasses and puts them gently out of harm's way. "I have the life I chose," she tells him, a tremor in her voice. "It's too late to change the past."

He pulls her into his arms. Lily buries her head in his chest and clings.

*

The next-to-last day before they hide is the last day they'll ever see each other. It's wrong, and she knows she should be with James, but with no knowledge of what the future may bring, Lily knows there must be closure. "If we survive," she tells him, standing outside his door, "this will be the last time." Sirius doesn't trust himself to speak and so he says nothing. They spent their time in silence, letting their bodies communicate for them. When it's over, Lily cries.

"I'm so scared," she breathes, speaking for the first time since she entered his flat. "I'm so scared, what if he finds us?"

"He won't," he assures her firmly. "Even I won't know where you are."

"But I'm still scared," Lily babbles. "I can't stop thinking about it, Sirius, I can't—"

"Yes, you can." He kisses away the tears on her cheeks. "You can, you will. You'll be safe." He kisses her forehead. "I won't let anything happen to you."

She looks up at him with her green, green eyes and whispers, "But you're not going to be there."

*

And he isn't. He isn't there when the doors fly open and Voldemort himself enters their house. He isn't there when, with a shout of pain and panic and terror and love, James pushes her to safety and himself into green light. He isn't there when she takes the curse for Harry and he isn't there when Voldemort destroys himself.

But he's there after. He's there when Hagrid takes the baby away and he's there when he realizes what Peter's done.

He killed her, he thinks madly, rushing towards the traitor. He took her away. He took them both away. James was wrong. He's still got one thing left to live for. He's still got revenge.

Wormtail lets out a cry, darting his eyes to one side. "Lily and James, Sirius, how could you?" In an instant there is an explosion and screaming and Sirius realizes that he doesn't even have that.

*

"Do you remember what it was like?" Lily asked him before she left that night. "Before we were us?"

"Things were simpler then," he said.

"Yes," she agreed. "But were they better?"

He doesn't know.