Avocado
Lily Evans Potter is alone, she's tired and she's sick.
She's sitting at an outdoor café, the sun is shining above a striped red umbrella, and the thing she wants most in the world is two tables to the slightly left of her in the hands of another woman.
As the slices of green disappear into the woman's mouth, Lily Evans Potter feels the slightest twangs of desire squirming in her stomach, and wonders how the movement of a spoon and the movement of a woman's throat can make her think this way. How that fruit can be so bloody tantalizing in the bright light of this afternoon.
That avocado is the most delicious thing I have ever seen in my life, she thinks faintly.
Lily Evans Potter is sitting here, today, in the sun and the shade, because she was informed that she is not required to patrol this evening. She knows that this is because (however much she hates it) Sirius and James are taking turns doubling up on patrol for her. Again. The last time, when she found out, she refused to accept it, stubbornly insisted on being there, on doing what she can because, dammit, she's here to help, to fight, to –
Not anymore, though, not today. Today her stomach is ready to turn in on itself, smells (one smell) are suddenly overpowering, and she feels as though even from here the greenness of the scent, the cold fruit, the metal of the spoon are calling out to her. Lily wonders again how the sight of that green can awaken the beginnings of what she can only call lust inside her mind.
Dorcas Meadowes is dead.
That happens to be important– that someone (someone else) was surrounded, disarmed, murdered, left with the swirling green mark above them. And yes, they were close, and that's important, too– well, as close as they could manage, with … business. But Dorcas is – was – cheerful, with the merry wrinkles around her eyes, and her way of starting every conversation with "My Michael" or "My Janie" or Ellen, or Peter or Tom. Who were all gone now – fled, not – well.
But today isn't about Dorcas, not entirely. It is in part, but it is also, in part, about the avocado she's lusting after, in part about the Muggle couple two tables down who are pointing at people across the street and laughing. It's mostly for something, anything, in the sunlight – because she knows it's out there – which will help her to be free. To smile.
She didn't want anyone here with her today because she knows how silly it is to want that. It's not a time for laughter, not really, and if anything, Dorcas' death is a lesson on just that.
No, that's cruel, that's awful – she takes the thought back.
That's not fair, especially when Lily knows – knew, dammit – the hard, pointed look in Dorcas' face just as well as her laughter, and knows – knew how often she'd bring up Peter or Ellen or Janie only to make Lily smile. It was something Lily's mother might have done, had she been alive, and Lily is trying to remember that feeling, sitting here under the striped red sun of the umbrella.
The feeling of knowing that your mother is alive, that somewhere there is a place for you where you can run at the end of the day, knowing that if nothing else, you'll find listening ears and warm mugs of tea and a soft blanket.
It's surprisingly hard. Even here, in the sun. It's very difficult.
It probably wouldn't make her feel very much better to learn just then that she's not actually alone, or tired, or sick – she's rather pregnant, in fact, and in seven months, nearly to the day, her son, will be born.
Her son, the hero, the savior, the boy who will know this feeling much better than she ever has.
Because Lily Evans Potter has forgotten what it is like to have a home.
And that is why, not really alone or tired or sick, she sits at an outdoor café beneath the sun, reining in tears and heartache and pain, not desire.