It was dark in the woods.
It was dark in her life sometimes, too.
But the stag listened.
He listened as she poured out her heart, as all the things she didn't dare to tell other people came out of her, all the stuff that she thought made her unlovable and broken... and that stag never judged her. In fact, if anything it seemed to love her more.
Being around that stag made her feel like there was light at the end of a very, very long night and the shadows in her heart were being chased away...
It was like a sunrise.
"Morning Love." James was smiling.
"Today, class, we begin analyzing dreams," Professor Vablatsky was saying.
"Here's my dreams, Evans." James was holding out a parchment and sliding hers toward himself. "Am I in these?" he asked.
"Not even once," Lily replied.
But she'd dreamed about her stag. The stag that was James. She just didn't know that yet.
"You're in mine," he said.
"Just get to work, Potter."
He was grinning down at her parchment, his eyes twinkling as he read, and she was getting so annoyed. She'd been truthful in her dreams. But even reading through her memories Sirius could tell James's parchment was a load of bullshit. Sirius actually rather thought he could remember sitting about in the dormitory laughing as James dictated his imaginings to a charmed quill that scribed the words he spoke down because he was too lazy to actually write, now that he thought about it.
"Evans and I were snogging in the turret off Gryffindor tower for like two hours. That's it, that's the whole dream. A whole lot of snogging after which Evans confessed her undying love for me because the taste of my mouth is just THAT GOOD..."
"You can't possibly truly be this full of yourself?" Lily demanded.
"Huh?" James asked, confused.
"You didn't really dream about snogging me," she snapped.
"You didn't really dream about snogging a stag," James quipped.
"I wasn't snogging a stag!"
"Yeah? What were you doing then?"
"Can't you bloody read?"
"You want a real one to analyze then?" James asked.
"That would be nice," she answered.
"Okay, well," James licked his lips, and looked at her, and even as he looked at her, he was struggling not to laugh. "The other day, I dreamed I was walking 'round in the woods and I was a stag --"
"WHY ARE YOU SUCH A BEAST?"
"Toerag."
"Idiot."
"Arrogant little cockroach!"
"Arse!"
"Absolute bully!"
James was grinning - and indeed, his smile did look rather arrogant, there was no denying that. "C'mon Evans, give me a try. One date, love, that's all it'll take..."
"The day I'd go on a date with you, James Potter, would be the same day that the Giant Squid learned to fly!"
James Potter's brown eyes stared back into hers, and his face hardened from a joking grin into a pursed lipped expression of determination. "You want the squid to fly?" he asked, and he was unbuttoning the wrists of his oxford shirt, rolling the sleeves up and turning for the door. "Then I'll make the giant bloody squid fly!"
He was serious.
No he wasn't, though, he was James.
But he was.
He was going out the door. He was drawing his wand. He was going down the stairs. Lily was running after him, screaming. "No, stop it, you musn't. You can't... Surely there's no spell...?" but James was so determined, Lily wouldn't have put anything past him, and she scrambled to keep up... and the entire of Gryffindor house was going after them, and others from other houses that saw the whole of Gryffindor hurrying some place. There was something to see here, and they were all gathered around the lake...
"JAMES POTTER YOU STOP RIGHT NOW! LEAVE THAT SQUID ALONE!"
"ACCIO SQUID!"
"JAMES POTTER, YOU MANKY MUPPET! I'LL NEVER GO ON A DATE WITH YOU, SO YOU CAN JUST STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING RIGHT THIS --"
"Wingaaaaaardium Leviosa!"
James Potter had his wand raised and the Giant Squid was levitating over the water.
"This is the best birthday ever," Sirius was laughing madly.
"Blimey!" Hagrid's voice echoed over the crowd of students.
"What student is ignorant to be doing that?" Madam Pomfrey gasped.
"It's Potter," said Slughorn.
"Of course it's Potter," said McGongall.
Sirius's laugh was still ringing about and he leaned in. "Well Evans, looks like you do owe James a date after all, huh?"
"You levitated it," Lily was saying to James as the whole school was set afire talking about the boy who had levitated the giant squid to get a date with the girl. "You did not make it fly."
"A technicality, Evans. You owe me a date and you know it."
"I do not, Potter."
"Oi now! Don't you go backing down just because I managed to do something you thought was quite impossible. That's not proper sportsmanship, Evans. The proper thing to do is to agree to go on a date with me. You know, the Yule Ball's coming up and I'm still unassigned..."
"Yeah Lily, if you don't go with him he'll have to go... stag," Sirius said, hooting with laughter.
"I don't care how determined he is.... I will never date James Potter."
Gods, how many times had she said that?
Every bloody year for six years.
"I will never date James Potter."
"I will never date James Potter."
"I will never date James Potter."
"I will never date James Potter."
"I will never date James Potter."
"I will never date James Potter."
There was no keeping a tally of the number of times he'd asked versus the number of times she'd said no. The number was too high.
They were on the Hogwarts Express.
Sirius leaned close, petting her hair with his finger tips. "I have this brilliant idea."
"Stop that," Lily said, batting his hands off her.
"I want to start a club," Sirius said.
"A club? Sirius, please, I have more important --"
He pulled out a badge and shoved it into her hands. It was ghastly hot pink with garish green writing and horribly ugly, really. "P.A.H.W.F.A.H.W.W.N.D.J.P.?" she asked. "What the hell is this?"
"People at Hogwarts with Fucking Awesome Hair Who Would Never Date James Potter - P.A.H.W.F.A.H.W.W.N.D.J.P. for short."
"That's short?"
"It's very exclusive, this club, you see, and so far you and I are the only two in it."
"I didn't say I was going to be in it."
"Well you have the badge. You're in the club." He took it and stuck it to her robes, right next to her shiny gold prefect's badge. "There, it's all official like."
"I'm sorry," Lily said to Jasper Odair, who was sitting next to her.
"No, it's alright," Jasper answered, "It sounds very... official." He was staring at Sirius, clearly annoyed.
"I'd ask you to be in it, Odair but you'd probably date James Potter, given the chance." Sirius grinned wickedly. "Gay, aren't you?"
"Uh, no..." Jasper looked at Sirius funny.
"Sorry," Sirius said. "Blimey, I could've sworn..."
"Will you please go away?" Lily pushed Sirius.
"Now wait just a minute," Sirius said, "I'm not quite done with official club business. See here, you'll be vice president of the club. I'm actual president because I bloody came up with it myself and I made the badges and everything."
"Here."
"Now what?" She looked at the parchment in her hand.
"I wrote the club song. Take a look."
"This is absolutely ridiculous."
"Do you want to learn the club handshake now or later?"
"Sirius, get out."
And she'd slammed the door to the compartment in his face.
Just like she'd slammed the door on James asking her to every Hogsmeade Weekend, every Yule Ball, every Valentine Tea...
Thing was Lily couldn't see James's broken pieces, could she?
Of all the love that Lily Evans gave away, she never gave any to James.
Maybe because he asked for it.
Incessantly.
Or maybe because she was afraid of the way it felt when she did break down and love him.
There were flashes. Moments.
Moments when James didn't realize she was looking at him, moments when he thought nobody was looking.
Moments when his guard was down, when he sat in the back of a classroom struggling to understand a concept and he muttered under his breath and knocked his hand against his forehead in frustration...
Moments when he paused and knelt down to talk to a first year asking where the bathrooms were instead of just pointing them off in the vague direction like Sirius had done...
Moments when his dad was sick with the pox when he would get an owl from his mum and closed his eyes as he folded it back up after reading it and he'd bite his lip and look determined before opening his eyes back up and shakily return to the conversation with the other lads...
Moments when she said something mean to him and he just stared at her a moment, when there was a chink in the armor that he wore...
"Did you ever think, Evans, that maybe he talks big because he feels small?" Sirius was demanding.
And there were the jaggedy pieces. There was the broken parts of the boy called James Potter. There they were, exposed...
And there was a flash of the back of James, hunched over and his shoulders quaking, crying, the world falling apart around him - at very least in his own mind - sitting up at night, vulnerable... Atlas, shrugging.
"James..."
But he was pulling them back together, always hiding them from her view, tucking them away from sight.
"I'm alright, Evans."
Covering up those jaggedy edges that looked so familiar to her...
Familiar because they were the same shape as her own, only inverted.
Familiar because they fit her own.
And he was pulling out the chair beside him at the table in Potions when they were assigned to work together... and it was the smell of him rising up from her cauldron. It was the way he ran around her to grab the door to the classrooms to hold it open for her before she could reach for it, the way he held out a quill in class before she could go searching for her own.
Lily's heart beat quick in her chest.
She was sitting on the floor in the corridor in the fifth floor wing outside Dumbledore's office and realizing that maybe James wasn't a 'just' anymore as Mrs. Evans had put it once so many years ago.
Lily shivered, and there was a sweater, draped over her shoulders in the depths of the forest, brown eyes staring back into hers... James Potter... and then James's stag...
Her arms were around his neck, sobbing, and he nuzzled her... and then he was hugging her... and she could smell the bluebells... and so could Sirius in her memory.
And he was dipping her low, staring in her eyes, his glasses reflecting Christmas tree lights. "I want you to know my intentions for you, Evans..."
"Is it a duck or a date, Evans?"
"A duck."
"We're friends."
"Right, friends."
"Friends who snog."
And he was kissing her... tentatively putting his hands on her waist, his skin making her skin tingle with proximity as the broken pieces slid together... a perfect match... like cogs fitting together...
"Alright Evans?" he asked.
Lily nodded. "Alright."
"Would you like some tea?" he asked. "Milk and a spot of sugar, yeah?"
"You know how I take my tea?" Lily looked up at him in confusion.
"I've seen you prepare it in the morning at breakfast," James said, flushed.
"But you remembered?"
"Evans... I remember everything when it coms to you."
It was her turn to flush.
"How do you take your tea?"
"Two sugars," James replied.
"No milk?" she asked.
James shook his head. "Not a drop."
"James?"
"Evans?"
"Why do you like me so much?" she asked.
They were leaning against the barrier around the singing carousel by the sea, Sirius was on the ride, going by in flashes... and the pair of them were watching.
James looked over at her and the sincerity in his face was so obvious - a deep water well, filled to the brim with the truth of what he was about to say. "You're like love wrapped in flesh, Lily. It's impossible not to love you... Haven't you noticed that everyone in the world wants to be around you, close to you, loved by you?"
"No..." she laughed, "No."
James's eyes searched hers, "There's a queue Evans."
"Shut up, there isn't. And if there was, nobody would be in the line."
"I have been for ages."
She stared at him.
"What would it take, Evans? For you to love me?"
"Grow up."
"Okay, I will." (And he did, Sirius, thought.)
"You won't. You can't. You've got Peter Pan syndrome."
"For you, I'd do anything."
"You wouldn't."
"I would."
But he would.
Even if it meant breaking himself further.
He'd take a killing curse.
He'd tried once.
More than once, actually.
And he'd do it again.
"How did you make it through all that?"
Flashes of the prison, of the dream of Havmork, of the suffering, the torture, the pain she'd dreamed of him in, the pain she'd found him in, the pain she'd saved him from...
"I thought of you, Evans."
It was the deepest love.
The sort of love that Lily gave away to everyone else, that she couldn't give to herself.
Sacrificing love.
The sort of love that filled the empty places.
And they were kissing - kissing by the fountain in Godric's Hollow...
He was holding her so close, the broken pieces matched so perfectly, she'd never felt so aligned with anyone in her life... the way they just... fit.
And she was crying.
Crying with joy.
She was holding onto him, her arms around his bare shoulders, breathless and teary-eyed... it was their first time, and he'd asked her a hundred thousand times if she was alright and if she wanted him to keep going... and she was, and she did want him to... but when he'd done it and he was there and she could feel him inside of her, really inside her, she'd started to cry because it was the first time she'd felt whole.
"Evans?" James asked, through the sweaty haze, his eyes concerned, unmoving, scared to draw back, his body pressed to hers, "Am I hurting you?"
"No... No, you're healing me."
"Come again?"
And she'd laughed... "Now is not the time for puns, Potter."
"What? What pun? Oh." He flushed bright red. "I - I wasn't..."
And she kissed his face, laughing...
And she kissed his mouth...
He was kissing her neck....
"Evans?"
"James?"
"I have a thought."
"What's that?"
"What if we made a baby?"
Another day, another moment, Lily braiding her hair...
"Evans, what are we going to name our baby when it comes?"
"I don't know..." Lily murmured.
But she did know.
"What... happened?" James asked, voice trembling. They were in an inn in Edinburgh. "I mean. What did Mopsus... need? I - how did we get back here?"
She felt guilty... and a bit sorry... sorry that he didn't remember like she did.
"Everything is okay, James."
"Trust me."
"Evans."
"Potter."
"Really, what happened?"
"We saved somebody's life."
James was pacing.
"James, I swear to you... He didn't change the timelines. I promise. It wasn't the past we've meddled with."
Precious seconds, Mopsus's voice whispered... and Sirius could barely breathe when he saw what Lily saw... when he saw Voldemort standing in a graveyard, saw a boy so much like James standing opposite that Sirius thought it was James for a moment... light from the wands connecting them...
Lily's voice echoed over the scene, like a voice over in a film, even as Sirius watched her appear beside the boy, watched her appear from a ball of light, falling from the wand of Voldemort and pull herself to her feet --
"Who is the boy?"
She would've given all of her precious seconds for this boy...
It was the deepest love.
The sort of love that Lily could only give away because it had finally been given to her.
By James.
Sacrificing love.
"Hang on," Lily answered, "Your father's coming... It'll be alright, just hang on."
"Mum?" the boy barely breathed the word.
And Sirius was so bloody shocked that the love magic shattered and he sat back, letting go of Lily's hands, staring at her, wide-eyed.
Lily was wide-eyed, too.
They stared at each other for several very long minutes.
"You saw Harry," Lily whispered.