Disclaimer: Not JKR. Alas.

Hello, dearies. So, I do know that this is NOT the TL/VW story. I am quite aware of that. But since I feel horribly about deleting Crash Into Me, I thought I'd post this for you while I'm working on PS I Just May Fancy You. Which is going rather splendidly, I thank you. This is different for me, as I generally don't consider myself a Sad Story (not that this is entirely sad) writer. But I've had this idea in my head for quite some time, and my sister-in-law recently read it, and told me that I should put it up here. I do hope you like it!

Lily Potter was in trouble.

Again.

This time, it really wasn't her fault Honestly! If James wasn't such a stupid git, she never would have thrown that…whatever it was of her dad's. How was she supposed to know that it would practically explode and James would have to go to St. Mungo's to get the burn fixed? She was only six! And besides, James was a complete prat. It was his own fault.

So now Lily had to stay upstairs all day while her dad worked downstairs, but James and Al got to go to Uncle George's shop. It just wasn't fair.

Lily sat on her bed and watched the Holyhead Harpies fly around on the poster opposite her. She wanted to go outside; she wanted her dad to watch her fly around, since apparently she was too little to fly alone. Lily scowled. She was too little for anything. James and Albus always got to do more than she did, and she wasn't even that much littler than Albus!

Her room was boring. There was no way she'd sit in there all day. Lily got up and wandered around upstairs. She spent a few minutes in James's room, but after something in a pile of his clothes exploded, she quickly left. Albus's room was boring. She had already gone through all the interesting stuff before. So she walked into her parents' room. Usually she wasn't supposed to go in there, but all her mum said was to stay upstairs…she never said to stay out of somewhere.

Lily wandered around, looking at the pictures on the wall. There was a quite large one of all of her family last summer. She almost started laughing when she looked at it. She and Roxie had their arms around each other and were giving huge, ridiculous smiles to the camera. James had Albus in a headlock, while Freddie was trying to simultaneously sit on Hugo and kick Molly. Her Uncle George was puffing out his chest and dramatically imitating her Uncle Percy. Everyone else looked pretty normal. Well, except Teddy (who had been there with his gran), but Teddy usually had blue hair and never looked normal. The picture next to that was from before even James was born – it was her mum's old Quidditch team. The Harpies were grinning hugely at the camera, looking especially jubilant at having beat the Wimbourne Wasps in the British League Championship. There was another picture of her mum and dad when they were really young, and covered in muck. Her Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione were there, too, along with Teddy's Herbology professor and her mum's friend Luna. Lily knew that the picture was taken right after the Battle of Hogwarts – she could tell because everyone in the picture looked both really happy and really sad at the same time.

Lily walked over to the table at one side of the bed. She opened the drawers – just a load of her dad's junk. But…underneath a bunch of papers was an old, leather-bound book. Lily pulled it out. It looked like a photo album. She sat down on the floor and opened it. There was only one picture on the first page: a young man with messy dark hair and glasses, a young woman with dark red hair and green eyes, and a chubby little black-haired baby. They were all smiling hugely at the camera. Lily turned the page. There was a photograph of five girls, all dressed in Hogwarts uniforms, sitting on a scarlet-draped bed. The girl on the left was the same as the lady with the baby from the page before. The next page had four boys with their arms around each other, grinning like maniacs.

Lily continued to flip through the album. The next page had a picture of the man and lady from the first page, but in this one, the man was pulling the lady in what looked like a dance in the snow. The lady was laughing very hard. On one page, there was a photo from a wedding. The man and lady from the first page were dressed as a bride and groom, and a slightly older version of one of the boys from the third page was laughing with his arms thrown around both of them. As she watched, the man in between the bride and groom shook his dark hair out of his grey eyes and kissed the bride on the cheek. The bride swatted at him, but laughed. The groom just beamed a little smugly, as if all his wishes had just come true.

There was a picture of the groom and the grey-eyed man on another page, but this time, they were dressed in jeans and black t-shirts with large gold birds on them. The grey-eyed man had the messy-haired man in a headlock, but both of them where laughing. On the page opposite, the auburn-haired bride was laughing with a round-faced woman in a kitchen that Lily quickly recognized as the one at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, where Kreacher lived.

As she got towards the end of the book, there was an addition in most of the pictures. It started with a picture of the bride and groom from the previous pictures holding a tiny baby. Lily watched the man lean down and kiss first the lady's forehead and then the baby's. The next picture was one of the grey-eyed man beaming as he held the little baby. In the next, the same grey-eyed man was holding the baby, only this time, the man with the glasses was watching him and laughing with two other men – one who had floppy sandy hair and was quite thin, and the other who was short and stout, with watery eyes.

When Lily got to the last two pages of the book, she started to cry. The penultimate picture was of the four men from some of the previous pictures attempting to put icing on a cake. They were failing rather miserably, Lily saw as the grey-eyed man accidentally shot icing at the sandy-haired man. The short man with the watery eyes was concentrating very hard on writing on the cake. So far, all it said was Happy Birthday Har.

That was when Lily started crying. Because now she knew whom the people in the pictures were.

The last picture was the saddest. The bride and groom – whom Lily now understood were her grandparents – were holding a dark-haired baby – Lily's dad. The horrendous cake from the last picture was in front, the Happy Birthday, Harry! smudged and melting off. Both her grandmum and granddad looked older and wearier in this picture, and even though they were young, they both had small signs of wrinkles by their eyes. But they were smiling hugely. They were so happy. Lily carefully took the picture out of its little tabs and brought it closer to her face. She had never known these people, but suddenly, she missed them. She missed them with all her heart. She had never been sad that she only had one grandmum and granddad. She never really thought about it. But now, all Lily wanted was to hug these people, to talk to them and tell them everything.

Lily flipped the picture over. On the back, in a loopy scrawl, there were words written. Lily struggled to read them until she finally read: Prongs and Lily with the wee Prongslet on his first birthday. Picture taken by Moony, because he fears the wonderful camera skills of the World's Greatest Godfather. And Lily started to cry harder. Then she thought of something. She got both a mum and dad, and two obnoxious brothers, and all her dad got was his horrid aunt and uncle and a fat cousin. And Lily, who rarely cried because when she did, James ragged her about it for days, started bawling. It was so unfair. All the good people always died, and all the bad people lived.

Lily carefully put the picture back, trying very hard to not cry on it. Then she picked up the album and ran down the stairs, still crying.

"Lily?" her dad called from his little office.

She ran in and threw her arms around her dad, sobbing into his shirt. He seemed a little shocked, but rubbed her back and held her tightly. Finally, she got herself under control and pulled away. Her dad looked down at her through his glasses.

"What's wrong, Snitch?" he used the nickname James started when she was born (he said she was as small as a Snitch, only ginger).

Lily wiped her eyes with her arm and rubbed her nose. She held up the album to her dad, "It's so sad. They all died."

Harry looked at the album his daughter held out, "They did. But they died so that the people who lived after them didn't have to be scared. They were very brave people, Lils."

Lily sniffed, "But I want to know them. And I can't."

Harry smiled sadly, "I want to know them, too. But do you know what?"

"What?"

"They're watching over you. Right now," Harry smiled and tweaked Lily's nose.

Lily frowned, "Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

Lily shrugged, "Okay…if you say so."

Harry laughed. Lily smiled, "Did you know any of these people?"

Harry nodded, "I did."

"Tell me."

And so Harry opened up the album and showed Lily Sirius Black, his godfather; Remus Lupin, Teddy's dad; her grandmum Lily and granddad James, and everyone else he knew in the album.

… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …

"Lily found the album today," Harry told Ginny as he stirred a cup of tea after the kids had gone to bed.

Ginny looked up sharply, "The one of your parents?"

Harry nodded. Ginny sighed, "What did she do?"

"She ran downstairs to me, crying, sad that they were all dead," Harry stared at his cup of tea. His daughter's compassion and sadness had broken his heart. He wished there was a way to fix it, but like Dumbledore said, 'death is the next adventure'. You couldn't bring people back.

"Oh, Harry," Ginny breathed, and wrapped her arms around her husband's waist.

They stood that way for a while, holding each other, while upstairs, their little girl dreamed of playing with a lady with auburn hair and green eyes and a man with messy dark hair and glasses.

There it is. An ickle wee treat for you for being such loverly readers while I work on PS-IJMFY.

Review?

-NeverAPrefect