All you need is love. Love, love is all you need.
A simple two-sentence phrase, repeated to her by James in all the bad times they'd had to face together. A seemingly tragic way to put their relationship, but their endurance and the hardships they faced pulled them closer together. It had taken a long time for Lily to accept James as someone who could make her life better. He'd always been the obnoxious conceited boy, the prat who played the pranks on the Slytherins unnecessarily, the one who made fun of her best friend Severus, leader of the self-deemed Marauders, and the one who pestered her endlessly to go out with him.
But in seventh year at Hogwarts, things changed. The world outside Hogwarts' walls was changing itself. It became more bleak, and sinister. No one could be trusted, anyone could be on the wrong side. The side filled with billowing cloaks, masked faces, tattoos on arms. With red eyes, snakes, and whispered forbidden curses. Trees lost their leaves early that year, and as Lily watched from the Head Girl's dorm, it seemed as if the once-friendly things were now working for him too, as their branches clawed at the gray and desolate sky.
Life was becoming endless, even hopeless. Slytherins had nasty grins on their faces when they looked at her; she knew they were looking right through her skin to her veins, in which what they called dirty blood was circulating. Morning mail was becoming a dreaded affair, with every day bringing more horrible news of killings, torturing, disappearances. Distraught faces, and children running from the Great Hall, covering their face in their hands as tears streamed down, was becoming a far too regular occurrence.
And in her own dorm room, something else was changing. Or should we say someone else. The once-arrogant and immature git that had been James Potter had changed. His features were no longer covered with the permanent aftermath of an especially good prank. His wand was now only raised when it was entirely necessary, and never had he spoken of Hogsmeade to her. She wondered sometimes if it was the war that had made the change, or if he'd have been bound to grow up sometime. She liked to think the latter, as it made her feel better about what she did that year.
That year, she accepted him, whole and clean, for who he was. He was a man now, attractive and kind. He could be wonderful when he wanted to, had a knack for Transfiguration, and could be great in other classes when he set his mind to it. And inside him burned a passion for her that neither could quite explain, that when she finally accepted and nurtured, broke free and surprised them both. This was the year that they fell in love.
Not the most fitting time to fall in love, with a full-blown Wizarding war raging outside Hogwarts, the war between good and evil, love and hate. But nothing and nobody is perfect, and it was nobody's fault that the time they should come together could be the worst time of them all. Though some could say that without them coming together, the one man that would one day defeat the Dark force that was Lord Voldemort once and for all would never be conceived.
It is true that falling in love during war affects and diseases many, as attachments are made before they go away, die away. Before the woman is left alone, many have read the stories, watched the dramatic movies. But in the Wizarding world, it's oh so different. In the Wizarding world, a man and a woman such as James Potter and Lily Evans could be on the right side, they could come of age, and they could decide to fight him to their best ability. They could defy him, they could resist him, and they could fall in love in the midst of it all.
They could and would lie awake at night, thinking about how soon they'd be joining the Order for real, and that their lives would be risked. They could embrace and kiss and touch, tell each other everything would be alright, not really meaning it. They could talk to Remus and Sirius, try to be brave and confident about their willpower to fight him. And they could wonder if they should move back, if they could move back. Back to times that were simpler.
And James could constantly, constantly remind her, through her worry and fears, that no matter what, she should remember it. Remember "all you need is love. Love, love is all you need." And it would prove useful, as time would wear on and Voldemort would become stronger, as their friends were tortured and killed before them. As through all the hopeless times, they would resist him, and best of all, love each other.
That they would soon become so in love that it'd completely control them, be absorbed in them. That they would get married, because it wasn't too young when the next day you could be dead. That they'd produce a son, a miracle. And that, with great reluctance, they were to be added to Voldemort's list of victims.
They would be shuttled from house to house, as their whereabouts became revealed, as they made it just in time, out of the house. That they beat him by minutes, nanoseconds, jiffies. That they would stay as happy as they could, even if they were shut up in houses with nothing to do but eat, worry, entertain Harry, and love each other.
That even though she knew James was going out of his mind locked inside houses, he would be brave through it all. Brave for her. That he would constantly gaze at her during their days, tell her he loved her randomly, and the same two-sentenced phrase that's coined to the Muggle band, the Beatles. Always, always there.
And she always, always believed it. He told her that he had to make sure she knew that he loved her always, because any moment could be their last now. And she always replied, because she knew he was right; any moment could be the end. So until the very end, the very end of both their lives, they said it to each other.
And when she heard her husband's body fall to the ground while she tried to protect her son, in the last minutes of her life, she could hear him already from the other side, chanting to her "all you need is love. Love, love is all you need." She knew it was the end for her, and that she'd join her husband, who she loved above almost all, except for Harry, soon enough. And as she died for her son, giving him protection for next seventeen years of his life, her head filled with the phrase "All you need is love. Love, love is all you need."
And as her and James watched their son fight and resist and fall in love himself and finally vanquish Voldemort, they chanted it themselves to him. And he heard it in his head, always in the back of his mind, though he'd never know where it was coming from. That it ran through his very veins. All you need is love. Love, love is all you need.