Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Safe & Sound

"I said 'don't leave me here alone'."

She recalled the connection which had formed that night between them as he had held her for hours as she sobbed, doing and saying nothing until she did. Lily had been embarrassed, she didn't know the extent of grief and felt like she had cheated the ones closer to her friend, but James had taken that away.

"I said that I wouldn't, didn't I?"

She lent forward again and nodded.

"Yes."

"I meant it more than anything I had said before then, and I mean it still. It kills me to see someone as pure as you has had their bright light dimmed. But I would curse myself rather than not see it, if it is you and Harry."

"Quite the poet."

They both half smiled, too experienced with grief for their years.

"I mean it. You don't have to hold back. I am here and will not, cannot, leave you, ever. Please, let me in."

But all that's dead and gone and passed tonight

He let his hands fall from her face and sat beside her, catching her fingers and lacing them between his own like he would never let them go.

"I know how much Marlene meant to you."

Lily looked at him, conveying through her tired eyes the despair at his words.

"Dumbledore said they were all outnumbered, and there are rumours You-Know-Who was there himself. No survivors to confirm it though..." Her whisper trailed off as her eyes glazed over again.

"She would have fought so hard, our Marl, all of them would." His words had the air of desperation in them.

Lily looked up at James and appreciated for the first time the hurt in his own eyes.

"I feel so awful about-"

"Why Lily it's not-?"

"The first thing I thought when I heard is it could have been you! Or Harry! And it could have been James don't you dare deny it!"

Her voice neared a pitiful shout and ended with a fresh flow of guilty tears. James had dropped his hands from her face and had been ready to fight back, but upon her flow of emotion he stopped himself. Lily felt like everything was suffocating, pressing down on her until she burst. She had been selfish beyond anything she had ever experienced and it scared her, but she couldn't deny it to herself; every second of every day she was on edge, ready for the moment to come, as it had done for her brave and skilled friend.

Her husband came closer to her as she had shifted away, and she could feel him stroking her back. Somewhere, very deep inside her, she felt the tingle she had as a teenager when he touched her.

It was gone as soon as it had come. Her head was in her hands, her hair over her face, but she heard and felt him leave the room. Maybe he thought she needed to be alone, or maybe he did. She would never admit it, but all she wanted was his arms around her again, rocking her as she cried.

Quiet noises of a small child pulled her from her reverie and she lifted her head, briefly registering the first drops of rain descending onto the windowpane.

"I thought you may need somebody a little cuter to cheer you up, I know it might be unlikely but I may have found the man."

She turned and saw her perfect son in her smiling husbands arms, the resemblance uncanny. She had often thought Harry would always be told he looked like him, not that that was a bad thing, but James was constantly showing him off as it was. She smiled as she imagined how he would look in his first year at Hogwarts, perhaps the mirror of his father as she had first met him.