hour prompt thingy
title: how to save a life, hairbrush. This is a multi-chap.
They met once.
Well, okay, not exactly. They knew each other for seven years.
But those seven years ended with a big fancy graduation, lots of tears, and a train.
And then they only met once after that, about ten years later.
It was a party. There were red streamers. Cold, sparkling champagne. A pool, lots of people, music, and laughter. It was cold, and one of the things she remembered the most were the hundreds of thousands of diamonds that lined every table, the large chandelier in the foyer, the cracks in the floor, and her dress.
She'd bought the damn thing on a whim, on one of those drunken nights full of regrets and joy. It was pearly blue, and the sparkling gems lined the collar and the cuffs on the long, thin sleeves. They were scattered along the chest area and the bottom. She still has it.
But she thinks back on that night now, staring at it in her lonely apartment, the soft fabric between her fingers. She was going to be late to work at this rate, but honestly? It didn't seem to matter.
It's all so clear.
"We knew each other once," he'd said, leaning on the wall with a thin glass in hand, dressed to the nines in a pressed black suit and spotless shoes. His hair was as wild as ever and she looked at him, at the sharper lines of his face and the twinkle in his eyes. "Do you remember, Lily?"
"I do," she'd responded, and then he stepped forward, and she didn't move away. He handed his glass to a waiter walking by while he barely gave the other man a glance, and put his hands on her hips.
"We didn't know each other well," he said next, still infuriatingly evasive and quiet in the loudness of the room. The floor reflected their images and the diamonds reflected off it, too, and it made everything so, so bright. A shining star, she remembers thinking, and she didn't protest when he leaned in and kissed her.
She drops the dress. It flows back into her closet and she instead pulls out her work clothes, feeling somehow bitter toward the whole day, and it was barely five thirty in the morning. She twirls her hairbrush and brushes her hair and then her teeth and then gets dressed.
Her plain black pencil skirt and white blouse mock her, and she wonders what he would think of her now, the once beautiful Lily Evans, top of her class at a school for magic and wonders - a secretary for a muggle law firm.
And she wonders why she cares. It's been years since she thought of him, of that night.
Her apartment seems so empty despite the décor, and she feels so small.
She grabs her phone, her paperwork, and slips on her shoes. Her keys are waiting in the sill of the window next to the door, and she steps out into the warm, summer air.
It's sweltering and brutal, and everyone is walking so slowly. She taps her foot in the back of the cab and watches absently as the world goes by.
The same people, the same ideas, the same jobs, the same morning. Every morning.
But him? He'd been different.
She thinks of Gatsby then, remembering that story, all about riches and false romance. A tragic tale that reflected the treachery that haunts the upper class.
She cannot decide for the life of her if it was a good thing or not that she got away when she did.
"Did you ever imagine something else?" she'd asked late that night. Their hands were linked and their feet were in the pool, glitter in their hair and their champagne glasses full for what must had to have been the thousandth time that evening. Maybe that's what made her ask.
"Like what?" he'd asked.
She shrugged. "Like… something magical."
He'd laughed. She can still hear it, loud and surprised, and his eyes had been fond when he looked at her. "My whole life is magical," he'd said.
And she shook her head. "No, not literal magic," she's protested. "Like… like. Like a fantasy."
"Here," the cabbie says, and she jerks out of it, handing him his money and stepping out.
The heat is so much more unbearable than it was ten minutes ago. Even that night had been cooler and there'd been hundreds of people packed tightly.
All his friends, some of her old ones, people she hadn't seen in a decade. Marlene and Alice and Frank and Emmeline and Remus… all of them, as enchanting as ever, and she felt like a star alongside them.
Now, she feels like the dust that comes after a death.
Her boss doesn't say anything to her, just looks at her with raised eyebrows. The man is kind to say nothing, because she doesn't know if she'd react all that well.
She doesn't want to be cruel.
The day goes by slowly and there's nothing new. The same paperwork she's worked on for a week sits on her desk. The pictures on her desk don't even move.
She wonders when she started to miss her old life.
Petunia hasn't spoken to her in years, either. It's not like she has anything that could keep her from it. No real reason why she left.
She picks up the photo she has of her and her parents. It's a fairly recent one. They were at a dinner party for new year's, and it was nothing like what she had experienced in that diamond dress.
There'd been stuffy people who asked where her husband and children were. They'd asked why she wasn't married like it was their business and her parents had done nothing.
They'd all counted down to midnight and the alcohol hadn't even burned like proper firewhiskey. There'd been no fireworks. No spectral scenes. No magic. Just a few noisemakers and a couple of people kissed their spouses and that was it.
The party had dispersed within an hour.
It had been dawn before she'd left him.
She stands to leave her office.
Her cab is waiting for her.
She looks across the street.
Emmeline.
Their eyes meet, and Emmeline, kind, sweet Emmeline, smiles at her. She smiles back.
The cab driver honks at her, so she gets in the cab, but not before she sees Emmeline disappear around the corner, her wizarding robes whipping around her ankles.