Of Chocolate and Raindrops

Save it for the Morning After

Lily woke up in the morning feeling strangely groggy. Her head felt like it was filled with stuffing. She wondered why, and then last night’s events flooded in. She sat up completely straight, and started breathing heavily, looking around her lit room. It was alright, she realized. She was safe.

                Just as she was about to lay back down, she saw something that she did not expect. James Potter was lightly snoring in a chair besides her bed. His head was tipped back over the back of the chair, and his hair was even messier than normal. He looked surprisingly peaceful when he slept. She wondered if he had been there the entire night, and then she realized that he probably had.

                She didn’t want to wake him up yet, so she slid out of bed, and quietly tiptoed into the bathroom.

                Oh no. She looked awful. There were purple spots under her eyes, and she had an enormous black and green bruise on her left cheek. There was a blood stain from her top lip to the bottom of her neck. Her eyelids were puffy, and her top lip was busted. She ran her finger over her nose, which, oddly, was the only thing that looked even vaguely okay. Her hair even looked bad, like a hippogriff had died in it after having babies in it.

                After a moment or two of looking in the mirror, she got the odd feeling that something was different about her. Yes, besides her face. Blush filled her cheeks quickly as she noticed that she was wearing James’ sweatshirt. She was still wearing her clothes from the day before, and felt such a burst of hatred for the clothes, as if it were their fault that she had gotten tortured. Which it obviously wasn’t.

                She grabbed a long sleeve shirt and a pair of jeans from her drawers, and then locked her bathroom door. She knew James was still sleeping, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

                She turned the water on, and tested it until it was very hot. Lily despised cold showers, and she loved that Hogwarts had endless hot water, unlike her house’s shower, which ran out of hot water after one shower. She stepped into the stream of water, and closed her eyes. It felt like she was washing yesterday off, and getting ready for today. It washed over her entire body, and she only got out when she realized she was officially a prune. Her skin was all wrinkly, and she hated that.

                She dressed herself, and then decided to put James’ sweatshirt on over her shirt. It was really comfortable, and it smelled like him, which was a definite plus. She dried her hair, and pulled it up into a ponytail. She reached for her wand, but she didn’t have it. It must still be on her nightstand.

                She hesitantly pushed open the bathroom door, and let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding when she saw James was still sleeping and still there. She walked over to her nightstand and she realized that she would have to reach over James to get her wand, which was, sure enough, sitting on the little table. She put her hand over his shoulder very slowly, and picked up her wand, and she was about to go back to the bathroom when she saw his eyes. He had been watching her the entire time.

                “Good morning, Evans,” He smiled weakly. “Are you okay?”

                “Yeah,” she sighed. “I think so,”

                “You felt well enough to get dressed, that’s good!” he smiled, he looked over her clothes, and she could see the corners of his mouth flick up when he saw that she was wearing his sweatshirt, though he didn’t say anything.

                “I’m going to go heal my face really quick,” she said. “I’ll be right back,”

                In the bathroom, she brought her wand over her face, and she siphoned off the dirt and blood. She shrank her bottom lip down to normal size, and cleaned it off, so that there was only a little cut. It was weird watching her bruise heal, though. She repaired the broken vein in her cheek, and the bruise disappeared as her wand passed over it. It was like she was wiping marker or something off of her face with a stick.