If you recognize it, it's not mine. Characters belong to JKR.
"Won't you leave me alone? You're as vexing as an encumbrance." Lily sulked as James tried to talk to her for the third time in a half hour.
"No; you're clearly in a distemper, and I want to help you feel better." James sat down next to her and wrapped her in a hug. He had rarely seen her as unbalanced as today, switching quickly from being stoic to emotional.
"It's not a fixable problem. It's an ineffable, lamentable tragedy. I don't even know what to do. She's always been there, you know? She was my Sunday School choir director when I was little. Our favorite song was Jesus Loves Me; I made up hand motions. We worked Vacation Bible School together. It's Ironic; one of our kids had Leukemia and Ms. Penny dies of cancer. She sang in the choir; she was the sustenance of our church." She broke off and tried to stop crying.
James had to pause for a second; usually he had an affluence of feel-better-isms, but he didn't really know how to respond to that one. His initial thought was to add an embellishment to her story, but he had a speculation that it would not help. She continued as he contrived something to say.
"She habituated coming on ASP; I think she was up to 26 years. She never had censure for anyone, never had malign for anyone. I can't believe she's gone."
Just then, James spotted Sirius coming down from the dorms. Knowing that Sirius needed to know that this was a prodigious issue in Lily's life and not a trifle, he slowly shook his head, hinting for Sirius to leave.
Sirius, intending to procure one of the room's commodities for collateral for a book he was to borrow from Remus, gave James the required deference and decided he'd come down again later.
