Word Count: 521
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I don't claim to own Harry Potter, it's all JKR's.
'I'm just warning you, okay? I am the girl that everybody leaves.'
He stares straight into those twinkling eyes, sure that they hold entire galaxies within their viridescence. The only thought that bounces around his mind is that he wants to explore. He wants to jump into her eyes, race around those galaxies, learn everything as it is from her perspective.
Leave? Merlin, he's not sure that even death itself could drag him away from her. This girl is impossible. He looks at her - expression strongly set, perhaps the slightest of trembles in her lips. The aftershock from the earthquake that is herself and her past loves. These wordless moments between them feel like pregnant minutes, but it has been mere seconds.
She shakes her head, her auburn waves bouncing with her, and laughs a little. The slight shake in her chuckle dances into his ear. He's sure she can't hide anything from him. He sees too much. Feels everything. Maybe it's a gift and a curse in equal measures.
'Not me, not ever,' he finally replies, all words having been temporarily vacuumed out of his throat.
Smiling a thin lipped but mesmerising smile that is laced with sadness, she shuts her eyes for a brief second, as though telling herself that maybe this time is the real thing. He can almost read her mind - stop being so damn afraid, he imagines her telling herself in that half-second.
She is the girl that can roll her shoulders back and raise her chin after walking the pits of hell. Never afraid to speak her chaotic mind - against others, for others. Lily never shrinks back from the poisonous words that sometimes find themselves on her tongue, like others so often do. She accepts her nature, has learned to sleep with her perceptiveness, learned to dance with her pointed opinions.
He has seen flames explode from her mouth and engulf those that have burned her. Watched her soothe and heal many with the medicine of her words. Cut those too close for comfort with her sharp edges, or soften to allow those who have earned her trust and love a place right beside her.
Yet, he wants to know more. He wants to seep into her. Though her heart is now in a box, as she shields it from further scratching, scraping, cutting, bruising, shattering.
Maybe so many left because she was too much for them. Too jagged, too soft, too many paradoxes to be confined to one person. He can see that she may be difficult to love, but not for him. To love Lily Potter is easier than breathing, than sleeping, than anything he's ever known.
He reaches for her hand, the feel of her skin igniting gunpowder under his. Their fingers gently lace, and he's sure that nothing quite feels like this. Her hands are home. Her lips are home. Her body is home. Her mind is home. Never has he felt homesick until spending time apart from her. 'I love you. I could never leave you.'
Again, that sad little smile creeps its way onto her face. 'You have no idea how much I want to believe that.'
AN: ehhhhh, still feeling a little rusty! oddly inspired at the mo. reviews are always appreciated x