Everything Emerald

His lips are moving. Making sounds. But she cannot hear them because suddenly she can see, and everything is green. His sounds don't matter. His sounds are already gone.

She is here, but where here is could be better defined. She wishes time would halt so she could sit and figure it out. Her sister holds a blue butterfly out to her, a butterfly she has caught, holds it out by the wings. It is as blue as her pleated skirt and her eyes, it is crumpling in chubby baby fingers - Lily, see! See what I've caught! - quaking like a dried leaf. She stretches out her own hand and smacks it from Petunia's fingers, an angry slap, a red slap, because the butterfly is already broken. Her sister's blue eyes well up, small oceans, and Lily is already regretting her fury because Tunie is young, doesn't know any better, face just crumpling, and it is the first step into the rest of her life at age four.

Tunie wants green eyes, sparkling emeralds like Lily's, because her big sister can see and hear and touch everything with those eyes. Tunie wishes for green, for green like Lily's. And Lily wants to tell her that it is all right, now there is plenty of green, swirling in whorls, cascading. She can reach out and take a handful, and gently pour it into Tunie's eyes.

But Lily's eyes don't see. They stare straight thru the paper and she can't get the words to come out right. She is trying to write, she wants to tell him she is sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry we were beastly he was simply beastly and I didn't know any better no Severus that's not it don't throw this away I want to apologize I want forgiveness I deserve forgiveness you won't let me help you I can't believe what I am saying I apologize and blame you in the same sentence I want you to hear me I'm so sorry so sorry sorry I can't sleep he's my friend he's a jerk but he's my friend I think I like him I want for you to forget I want for you to like us I am so ashamed how can I like someone so cruel I am not cruel I am a monster please forgive me please please

And she gets to the end and looks back and sees that it is all muddled. Inside her head and down on the paper, it is muddled. And that poor boy she teased last year is never going to see this letter. Lily drops her forehead to her desk and hates being fifteen. She hates the fact that she hurt that boy and she hates the fact that she hates him and she hates the fact that for one small second, she enjoyed it.

Should she be enjoying this perhaps? All the green is soothing, a cool mossy mist. It is rushing toward her, never reaching her, but wrapping, coiling in her mind.

He holds her, warm hands running up her spine. She can feels his palms through her robes, they are damp, he is nervous, she is nervous. He has never touched her like that, charging her with white electricity and draining her at the very same moment. She knows this is different, that she is on the brink of something deep, that James has led her there, and she can feel the warm updrafts rising out of the chasm. She loves the warmth, presses for it, feels his mouth touch hers, sees a blooming within her mind. James' mouth full of warm updrafts, tentative, scared, and she wants to be scared with him. She is scared with him, a delicious thrill along her spine where his fingers hover, and there is no going back, and she knows - she knows - she no longer wants to go back.

The green has a smell. It is not mint, though she thought it might be. It smoulders. It is sulfurous and primal, an upwelling of the earth, and underneath there is a tug, a pull, a mix of fresh rain on pine trees, and it smells so good she could fill her lungs till bursting and use it to shout.

She has the letter opener and she is splitting the coarse envelope with it, cutting through. She reads and reads and reads again because she wants to splice every word into her mind, because her parents are smiling, because she is the first in her family. She can sense the untested water before her, as still as glass, and she longs to dive in because it is magic water. It sparkles. It twinkles. It rears up in shapes. It calls to her every cell, she can feel it zinging about within. She grabs Petunia up, twirls with her - real magic, Tunie! I have magic in here! - she wants Tunie to feel that if she just closed her eyes, she could fly, but Tunie wriggles free and runs, hides behind the door, stares out at her from blue eyes like a stranger's. Angry eyes. They accuse her of leaving before she has left, of going where Tunie cannot go, of diving into the water, of crossing the chasm. They say Tunie wants to feel it too, they say she can't, they say she is furious, they say Tunie cannot swim in that kind of water. Tunie's eyes accuse. They accuse, and for one long endless moment, they are bright green.

The green has a warmth. Not hot, never hot, impossible to be hot. It pours in through skin, it drapes itself over the heart, it promises things in whispers, and Lily thinks she could understand, but she is not really trying because the green is showing her things and she wants to see, to watch it like a reel. It spools, it clutters, it tugs and lengthens and draws out seconds into hours. She sits and watches and watches and sighs.

They sit and watch and watch and do not sigh. They do not make any sound. Lily grabs cold hands, limp fingers, waves her hand in front of vacant eyes. She wonders which reel Alice is seeing, it must be engrossing because Alice will not move. She will have to move, Lily thinks, her baby her boy her lovely little one will need her to stop watching soon, but Alice still does not move. Frank does not move. Frank stares. Alice stares. Lily tries not to stare. But she can do nothing else because her friends do not want anything else anymore, they do not want anything at all anymore, they have everything they need passing invisibly in front of their eyes. Lily wants to see, she sits and clutches Alice's dry hands and wishes that one day she herself will see because she gets the feeling deep down in her gut that seeing this, whatever this is, will answer everything. Every question, every need, every un-thought.

In the green are the un-thoughts. Ones she thinks she has thought, and ones she knows she has not, and ones she purposely did not think. They are all there, being seen and not thought, being heard and not understood. Questions being answered. Lily un-thinks in green, un-thinks about Alice's hollow eyes, un-thinks about unfinished letters, un-thinks about blue butterflies. She un-thinks that maybe she gets it now, that she understands what Alice saw and what she un-thought and why she will not look away.

Her sister thinks a lot. She does not write anymore, but Lily writes and writes and writes, enough for the both of them. She tells herself Tunie is thinking too much to write, thinking too much to visit. Lily tells herself she does not want Tunie to come if she does not have the time. Tunie will have the time soon, soon, in a month, in a year, in three years, surely she will visit and Lily can take her flying. Lily can show her how to curl her hair in an instant. Lily can give her the power to fix butterflies. Lily can turn her eyes into emeralds. But Tunie does not write, does not visit. Soon she will have time. Soon she will stop thinking so much. Soon Lily will see her again.

Lily sees it in the green, how Tunie's eyes were already emeralds, harsh, cold emeralds, carved from banks of dripping limestone. Tunie's eyes were green all along, but not minty green, or smouldering green, or primal green. Icy green. Angry green. Dead green. Lily shuts her eyes against it because this enveloping green is better. It soothes. It warms. It caresses.

It hurts. Lily has never felt such pain, and she has never felt such fullness, and she has never felt that if she continues to strain, the fullness will slip out of her and she will never quite get it back. James holds her hands in warm fingers, and she shouts at him and she shouts at the Healers, and she just shouts and shouts because pain demands shouting. This pain demands it with everything that it is. Lily obliges because she wants the pain to stop, she wants it to give way, and then suddenly, suddenly, it gives way and she has a son, a screaming son, and the pain has not gone away so much as it has changed, enveloped itself. There is a new fullness, a full little body in her arms, a full heat in her belly, a full surge of blood in her breast. This pain she wants, this pain of having and holding and never letting go. This pain of her husband's soft incoherent murmurs in her ear, of inarticulate grief for her agony and love for her effort. Of being unable to share the pain. Of tightly squeezed fingers. Lily is empty. Lily is full again. Lily has a son. She wants to hold him up and shout again. Shout that he is hers. Shout that he is theirs. Shout that he has her eyes and his father's hair. Shout that his name is Harry. Shout that Tunie has a nephew. Lily wants Tunie to step forward, wants to see her shining blue eyes, wants her to cradle the little body gently in her arms. Lily wants Tunie to clasp her hands, interlock fingers, and shout together until there is no more air. Lily wants Tunie.

Green all around her now, and Tunie is not there, and Lily still sluggishly searches through the green light. Her baby her boy her lovely little one will need her to stop watching soon. He will need her to stop the green light before it folds itself around him. But she needs to be folded, she needs to be warmed, she needs to see. Somewhere in there, in the emerald glow, Tunie is waiting with all the answers to the un-thoughts. Lily will know where she was, why she hid, why her eyes are cold, why she did not come and link hands and shout. Lily will think her un-thoughts. And then Lily will go back to her baby boy, her precious one, the one who filled her to the top, until she was bubbling over. She will hold him, smell his silken hair, lose herself in his green eyes. There will be nothing she cannot do. There is nothing she cannot do. There is nothing she will not do.

And now there is just nothing.