"... Maybe we shouldn't get married."
"What?"
Her voice about breaks his heart, but not enough to make the heavy picture in the back of his mind disappear. There isn't enough love in her voice for him to risk her life.
"James…" she hesitates, biting her lip. He can already see the tears gathering in her eyes, feel his heart breaking a little bit more, feel the pain cement with the knowledge that he is doing this to her. "Of course we should get married!"
He sniffs, unable to look away from her. How is it that even when he's about to shatter everything she is, she still has a gravity over him? "We can't. I- I can't." He breathes deeply, for all the good it does, and tries to keep his voice level.
"I can't be the reason you're killed, Lily. I can't live with that knowledge. Every day, every second without you would break me com-completely. They will kill you because I love you. I can't-I can't let that happen." But the oxygen can't get past the wall around his lungs.
"This is the easiest way." He manages, with the voice of a ghost. "Take away the motivation from the equation completely."
The sadness abruptly disappears from Lily's face, and in its place is rage. "You do not make my decisions for me, James Potter! You're my bloody fiancee-" she gives him a withering glare that, for the moment, succeeds in silencing him, "but that does not give you the right to decide my life! You have no control over my decisions, no control over who I love, and you certainly have no control over who kills me." Her voice stops at the end, like it halts, like she's never said the words out loud, never even to herself, that she's never admitted the possibility of her own death.
"But if I can save you-"
"You can't-"
"If I can guarantee your safety-"
"The only thing you will guarantee by not marrying me is my misery!"
He winces, like he's been physically struck in the chest. There's only pain on his face, but rather than stop her, it seems to drive her forward.
"I love you, James! I love you like I've never loved anyone else! I sodding need you! I fell for you so fast I didn't have time to catch myself; you fucking caught me! You grinned at me and my heart shot out of my chest and I knew-" she nods, frantic, "I knew you were the one. I knew I'd marry you one day.
"I don't care," she goes on, "I don't care what anyone thinks and I don't care what they threaten me with! I don't care what happens to me or how many times I end up in Mungo's as long as you're holding my hand when I wake up! I don't bloody care!"
And he snaps. His last vestiges of self-control snap.
"Lily!" he roars suddenly, voice breaking, "Mary died! She died because she was a Muggleborn and because she was trying to marry a Pureblood! That is exactly what the death threat said, and that is exactly what they did to her! They didn't only kill her-they fucking tortured her! There were burns and gashes all over her body, she was matted in blood, and her fucking fingers were broken! She was tortured within and inch of her life! For three days they brought her to the brink and they let her come back. Death was a gift when it got her. A fucking gift. Leaving all her friends and her family and everything she believed in and wanted to fight for was a gift.
"And I cannot bear the thought of that happening to you! So don't you dare tell me it'll be different because it's us! Don't you dare tell me we're going to make it, be the lucky ones-I know I've told you that- I know how many times I've sodding told you that, but Lily-" his voice breaks again, and an eery calm and despondence settle on his face. "If marrying me gets you killed, I'd never forgive myself for loving you too much."
Lily's crying again, crying and scowling and in so much pain that it makes him want to double over and sob. He can't imagine what it must be like hearing this from him; he knows if she was telling him these things, he'd break right then and there. But that's why she's the stronger one. That's why he's got to save her, a final act of love.
"I'm sorry." he goes on, taking her silence as acceptance. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry for the War, I'm sorry for the prejudice you've had to deal with all your life, I'm sorry I can't marry you. Just know that I love you, please, know that I love you more than anything. That I will never stop loving you, through all the days of my life, that you are everything to me and that every day I will-"
"Shut up." She snaps. "Shut up, James."
He shuts up. He'd give her anything right now, anything at all to make this easier.
Her hands are in her hair, buried deep and attached to her skull, digging in, probably, hurting her. She's not totally aware sometimes, of what she does when she's upset. He's had to remove her hands from her legs and arms several times, smooth her fingers in his, touch her lip so she won't gnaw through the skin.
No one else will ever know her like he does, and he's sorry for that, too.
"I hate you." She tells him. "But I love you so much more."
"I love you, too." He reaches for her hands, but she slaps them away.
"But you're wrong."
Her voice has such conviction that it wavers him-almost-for just a second. "Lily-"
"You're wrong." She goes on. "I've been a target since I was eleven. I've been a target since I stopped letting them scare me. I've been a target since Slughorn put me in his club. I've been a target since I was declared one of the smartest students at Hogwarts, over all the Purebloods and the Death-Eaters-in-Training. I've been a target since I fell in love with you. I've been a target since the very first time I held your hand on the way to class. I've been a target since the very first time I kissed you in the Great Hall, because you were so damn cute and I wanted to tell you but I couldn't, so I kissed you. I've been a target since I got my bloody letter, James.
You didn't exacerbate that. You didn't make it worse in any way. You made it better."
He didn't think it was possible to be in this much pain, to have hurt himself so much, and he certainly didn't know it was possible to have an infinite threshold for agony. He hopes he tops out, sooner rather than later, that at a certain he just won't be able to take anymore of this. But for now, for now he feels everything. Everything she says fires through him and makes him remember.
"James," she says in a strong voice, even as tears continue to pour down her cheeks, "you made everything better. You helped me through my parents' death, through Petunia's world-class arsehole rejection, through Severus becoming a Death Eater, through NEWTS, through Transfiguration, through that really embarrassing time I had gum stuck in my hair from when you," she poked him in the chest, "thought snogging in the Gryffindor stands would be the time of your life, through boring as hell Slub Club meetings, through me having to reject the invitation to become a Healer-in-Training. And you help me through every god damn day.
"You made everything in my life better, James. You make it better by being with me every day. You make me better. You make me stronger. You make me fight harder, because I know I have to get back to you. I know you couldn't bear it if I died. And I know you feel the same way! I know you couldn't bear if I died, because you love just as much."
She trembles suddenly, violent and broken before him. "This is me dying!" The sobs finally escape her, they wrench her frame and rack her bones and it's like she literally crumbling before his eyes.
And he did this to her.
"No-" he cries, slumping himself when he sees her knees shake, "no, Lily, no- I just want to keep you safe-"
"I would rather live another hour with you than one thousand years without you!"
They both fall to their knees, Lily shaking and James a shell, devoid of anything but shock and regret. "Lily-"
She doesn't interrupt him, but she does look at him.
"I just want you safe. I just want you to be alive when this is all over."
"You think I don't want that for you? You think I could live a day, even a second without you?" Her voice is a hiss, drenched in sorrow and agitation.
"No," he says honestly, "because I couldn't live for even a second without you."
He pulls her into his arms and she cries. He whispers that he's sorry, that he's so, so sorry, that he just wants her safe, that he loves her, that he'll make it up to her, that he's an idiot and that he's so sorry.
"I'll make it up to you," he vows again, his voice hoarse from the effort of holding back his own tears and keeping up a near-constant tirade of his fierce, emotional whispers. "I'll spend the rest of my life, our lives together, doing everything to make you believe how much I love you. Make you understand how sorry I am. How much I-"
"I already know." She croaks. Her hands are on his chest, gentle and heavy all at once. "Because I've thought about it too. Everything, all of it, I've thought about it all. I've never been selfless enough-"
"Selfless," he scoffs, self-loathing dripping from his voice.
"I've never been selfless enough to give you up." Her hands drift up to his face and trace his bones. His jaw, his cheeks, and then just his skin.
He watches her watch him, mesmerized by the way she's mesmerized by him.
"Marry me tomorrow. Outside, in the open, with protection charms and a tent and the sun and grass and flowers. Soft music that stops when we make our vows and conspicuous fireworks that would tell the people who want to kill us where we were if it weren't for our damn good protection charms. Marry me tomorrow so we can be husband and wife, so that if we die, we'll not only be together, but we'll be the Potters. Lily and James Potter. Marry me tomorrow so that history will know how much we loved each other, to get married at the height of the Blood War in broad daylight. Marry me tomorrow because I cannot wait another day to call you my wife."
They get married the next day, December the 8th, 1978. It's beautiful and it's simple, with a few white tents and some soft music that stops playing so they can make their vows to each other in perfect silence. It's small, most of the Order and the close friends that have become their family. A few professors from Hogwarts who saw their story begin seven years ago.
James tears up more than once and Lily actually cries when he reads his vows. They never tell anyone about the fight, the biggest fight they ever had. And history remembers them as heroes, lovesick teeangers who got married at the height of the Blood War. History remembers them as Lily and James Potter, brave and stupid.