-x-
altogether too much of him
-x-
"So… I guess this is the last one." It wasn't a question.
"Only if you want it to be." Her voice pleaded with him, implored him to stay.
"I don't."
"Then stay! For God's sake, Remus, it's not difficult!"
"We've been over this before."
"Let's go over it again, shall we?" Her face was set, her voice harsh and stubborn in the warm glow of the common room fireplace.
"Lily Evans, shall I give you my head on a stick now, or wait for James to rip it off when he finds out about us?"
"That depends… can I keep it?"
"Keep what?"
"Your head, silly!"
"And why would you want to do that?"
"Well, it's such a beautiful head, you see…" Her eyes were wide and the firelight glimmered in her pupils. He saw no sarcasm there.
"You think altogether too highly of me, you know." He murmured the words into her hair, cheek pressed lightly to hers and savouring the bittersweet smell of her soft, auburn locks …
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"Or so they say…" A comfortable silence ensued.
"Dance with me."
"What?"
"Dance with me!" At this, she sprung from his lap and attempted to haul him to his feet.
"Why?"
"What, now I need a reason to love you?" Then she pulled him from the chair and proceeded to manoeuvre him around to the sound of late-night nothing.
-x-
"You never told me you could dance, Remus."
"You never asked." She giggled, and snuggled further into his arms. They had the spent the night dancing, collapsing into the nearest armchair only when the first peals of thunder echoed ominously beyond the castle walls. Rain beat against the windows, an appropriate lullaby indeed for the last day and night of freedom.
A quick glance at the clock confirmed his suspicions; it was now, officially, Valentine's Day.
3:27am, Monday 14th February 1977.
He wasn't sure quiet how the doomed hours had slipped away, but thought it probably had something to do with the beauty this eye beheld in the form of one Lily Evans hugging him through the night… or maybe it was her comforting warmth, the reassuring weight of her head upon his shoulder as they twirled and spun about, dancing through the common room and laughing, swaying before the fire as precious minutes slipped through their fingers like sand through an hourglass. They were moments not wasted though, for the look of adoration upon her face ensured that he could've died on the spot and died a happy man in her arms.
Now they lay in the arm chair of previous hours, happy and warm, and content at last beneath a heavy woollen blanket, hastily pulled from the neighbouring settee at the first sign of her shivers. He felt hot tears dripping onto his scarred arms, salty, guilty tears, shed over something-yet-nothing-but-everything.
"Hey, don't cry on me," he whispered, burning droplets forming in his own eyes as he spoke. She sniffled and blinked them back, smiling weakly and looking up at him with something akin to reverence in her gaze.
"Oh, got something for you here," she said, leaning over the arm of the chair and rummaging in her bag. A few seconds of enthusiastic scrabbling and a couple of rather suspicious sounding noises ("Have you got some alive in there, Lils?") later, a slightly battered looking heart-shaped box of chocolates emerged from the much-abused sack of weird-yet-wonderful sounds and cocoa-based products…
"Something else for me to rot my teeth on asides from you?" he teased gently.
"You romantic old fool," she muttered fondly, settling back under the blanket and pulling his arm tighter around her.
"I concur with that assessment, you gullible old dreamer…"
"I don't know about gullible, Remus!" A self-mocking smile waltzed across her lips, exquisite in its peacefulness and charm.
"Make it 'open-minded' then, for the sake of political correctness," he conceded.
"That's more like it."
-x-
Dawn was breaking as their eyes next flickered open, the first grey tendrils stealing across the dusky, ebony sky and seeping into the darkened room.
With a horrible feeling of déjà vu, Remus glanced at the clock once again: 6:08am.
"Lily!" His hushed whisper carried through the empty space like a curse into oblivion, blunt daggers cutting through the air and quivering silently as they came to rest in the opposite wall. For a long, tense moment, the sound of Lily's breathing was woefully absent, then she exhaled into a deep sigh and the world began to turn again.
"Lily? Lily, wake up you ass!" She began to stir.
"Who you callin' an ass?" she yawned. He rolled his eyes.
"You, now wake up. The others will probably be getting up soon, you know."
"'S cold though…" The blanket had fallen off in the night, perhaps the result of some tormented dream lashing out in its quiet fear, or maybe a curious rat scurrying through and stopping to nibble and the worn edges, scampering away in fright as a soft snore echoed through the night; accidentally dragging away the object of its curiosities on catching claws… or maybe gravity just did its job.
"C'mon Lily, James'll be down here soon! I thought we agreed that today was the day?"
"It is…" she admitted reluctantly. She did not think it fair to increase his burden by prolonging this predicament of his.
-x-
"Lily?"
"Yes?" She looked up at him, an innocent expectancy in her eyes and smile on her face.
"Lily… Lily, we've got to stop this. Now."
"Stop what? When?" Her expression was now one of doomed hopefulness.
"Us. Now… soon." Dread.
"Why, though?" Confusion. Panic. Hysteria.
"Well… James--" Anger.
"I should've known… carry on then. I might as well hear it." Resignation.
"He… he's going to ask you out on Valentine's Day, you see, and I don't think I can stand up to it… I can't stand there and watch you reject him, knowing what I know, then go back to him later, you know?" Pity. She bit her lip, silent tears spilling over and trickling down her face as she deliberated.
"I understand. I think…"
"That's… that's good. But Lily; promise me you'll still understand come Valentine's Day?"
"I'll try."
"Promise me, Lily! Please?"
"I don't think I can, Remus."
"It's for the best; you know that, right?" Wrong thing to say.
"For the bestNone of this is for the best! If this was for the best, things would be working out right now…" The tears threatened to overwhelm, frenzied hiccups shuddering through her and her body racked with sobs.
"And they're not, I know."
"But we don't have to just… stop. Do we? Until the day…at least… surely it can't make much of a difference?"
"It makes all the difference in the world, Lily, now stay with me…"
-x-