The Marauders: Year Five #Wattys2017

After All This Time

Lily stared up at him, trembling.

"I'm sorry I frightened you," he whispered.

"H-how?" she breathed.

"Animangus," he said the word very, very quietly. The weight of it settled into the air, as heavy as a sentence.

Lily closed her eyes a moment, and she struggled to her feet, her stomach turning. He stood with her, and she lost her balance again, still dizzy from the shock and he caught her, holding her by her elbows to keep her upright as her palms pressed to his chest, catching her balance against him. She knotted her fists around the fabric of the maroon and gold striped quidditch jumper.

"Careful," he murmured, "Here, sit..." James gently lowered her onto the log, kneeling before her, one hand still on her shoulder as he stared up at her.

Lily stared into his eyes.

And suddenly Lily knew.

She knew beyond a doubt.

Of course. Of course he was her stag. How could she have been so stupid all this time not to see it? Not to know? How had she looked into these eyes so many times and not seen? Not recognized? But she had, hadn't she? Back in May, in that bloody room with all the clocks, when Mopsus had appeared to them, when he'd delivered that prophecy. She'd stared into James Potters' eyes then and she'd felt... she'd felt the quiver in her stomach then, hadn't she? She'd seen it then for a split second... She closed her eyes and tears slid down her cheeks from her eyes as she sat, shaking, the longer she thought on it, the more tremulous she got, until James could hear her teeth chattering from it and she opened her eyes and stared at him again and her breath caught in her throat and she shook her head.

She knew, but she couldn't accept.

"Do it again."

"What?"

"Do it again! Change back! Show me!"

James stood up, backing away from her a couple steps and he took a deep breath and with a soft pop! he dropped forward, his spine reshaping itself, his feet and arms twisting into legs, fingers cleaving together into hooves... his mouth and nose stretched out from his face, the nose becoming leathery as his eyes spread apart... antlers sprouting out, shooting up into the sky, his tail emerging from behind, swishing in nervous circles and the fur rippling it's way across his back, up his neck, over his face, his eyelashes lengthening and then -- there he was. Her stag again.

Lily stood up and she took two very weak-kneed steps forward, holding out her palm... and the stag pressed his nose into her palm like he always did in greeting and Lily Evans covered her mouth with her other hand. She thought of James's face in Divination two years ago when she'd told him about the stag in her dreams... how surprised he had looked... how interested he'd been, how he didn't laugh at her... Her palm moved to the necklace that hung at her collarbone. The one she hadn't taken off since the day he'd given it to her, her fingers running over the gold antler's curve... the prongs poking her skin. Suddenly, Sirius's voice echoed in her mind. Prongs! Sirius called him that... Remus called him that, too, she realized, so did Peter... Nobody else seemed to know why... She remembered Severus, accusing her of meeting James Potter in the woods, claiming that James Potter was there, under the invisibility cloak... fighting with her about whether or not she could trust James Potter... all this time, all those arguments she'd had with Snape... insisting she hadn't been meeting James... bloody hell. Shehad been meeting James Potter. She had.

She lowered herself to the bracken, this time on purpose and she laid herself into the neck of the stag, her face pressing into his fur, her tears hot and huge as they fell across her face. Her dress pooled about her as she clung to him...