Night had fallen long ago, but no one had bothered to light a fire. A brisk wind whipped across the rooftops and ruffled the leaves, speaking of a coming storm. In the dark sitting room, the only light came from the neighbor's windows, throwing vague shadows onto the floor. From her seat next to the window, Lily could see the empty path leading up to the house—of course it's empty, what did you expect?—which she couldn't help turning to every few minutes. As if to reassure herself that it was still deserted. That no one would come in to interrupt the cozy picture of domesticity that the two of them formed. Complete with the Gryffindor scarf that she was now twisting in her hands.
She watched James's chest rise and fall as he snored. His head was thrown back against his armchair, exposing his throat. A book lay open on his lap—she wasn't sure what it was, some Quidditch manual perhaps; she was fine with anything as long as it wasn't Wanton Witches Weekly. The thought of this last made her smile, remembering how James had once insisted that he would rather look at her than a thousand of those witches, but the smile slipped after a few seconds. She felt strange remembering a joke shared in this very room, so long ago, when things had been so different.
With each snore, his spectacles slipped a bit further down his face. Lily surveyed him with a kind of detachedness, as though she were surveying a scientific specimen. Her mind felt blank with exhaustion. If James were to awaken and ask her a question, she felt that she would barely be able to speak—the words would have to fight their way out of her throat, like someone trying to run through water.
She ran a hand through her hair, still trying to get used to the new feel of it brushing around her cheeks, the new lightness to her head. The red locks no longer fell in a long sheet, but cut short to barely above her shoulders and curlier because of the reduced length. It was still that same fiery red, like the blazing of autumn leaves rather than flames.
She looked out the window again. The path leading up to their house extended into the street, which eventually faded into blackness, the lamplight petering out less than thirty feet from their front door. The panes in the glass window rattled with the gusting wind. Lily snuck another glance at James. Still asleep. Fine, she thought, and stood up slowly.
Lily walked up the stairs. Turning back again, her glance lingered on the window, to the trees outside and their branches that were beginning to turn to skeleton fingers. More leaves were falling now, but not gently or delicately—they were fluttering around crazily, as the winds whipped the trees' limbs to and fro. She could feel a sudden chill cutting into her as if a gust of wind had just crept in through the window. Shivering, she crept into bed and pulled the cover over herself. She curled up, trying to get warm. She vaguely registered her husband climbing up the stairs some indefinite time later and laying down next to her. Sometime later during the night, he rolled over and away from her, leaving her to clasp the blanket tighter around herself, hugging her body because of the cold.
The storm had passed during the night. By the time Lily awoke, the sun was already up, glaring in her eyes. She sat up groggily, feeling as if she had just lain down to sleep. She had had problems with that lately—when she lay her head down, she couldn't stop her eyes from popping open, staring into the dim corners of the room for reasons she couldn't fathom. And when she woke, it was almost a relief, in that hour when the last dreams of her sleep always reminded her of slogging through a much, recycling the most basic thoughts over and over again in a series of lethargic half-dreams until she wanted to rip off the covers and unstick herself from the dense heat of her sun-baked bed.
She wasn't sure she wanted to sleep these days, anyway. The idea sounded nice, but she also had the feeling that something was waiting for her in that darkness. She didn't know exactly what, but it had the noxious stink of a bad dream.
Some of those things that kept her awake and staring into the corners of the room were things she was familiar with, some of those words which she had heard muttered and whispered on the streets—"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named"—"Death Eaters"—and of course the inexhaustible variety of ways to report a disappearance or an attack or the death of a loved one. All these she was well acquainted with. But some things…she didn't know. Some things she didn't want to think about too hard, because they were much more familiar to her than those other events in the outside world. Sometimes they took the shape of the man that lay next to her at night. The man she had sworn to love to the end of her days, the man who had watched her walk down the aisle with love and admiration in his eyes, and the man that sometimes, for no reason whatsoever, made her feel cold inside.
Her gaze fell to the calendar tacked to the wall. Oh, she thought dully, it's already Halloween. A particular turning point she had once looked forward to as a child, and later as a student at Hogwarts (although mainly for the Halloween party in that case), had slipped by her. She had once had the vague idea that she and James would cultivate a reputation in their neighborhood for handing out the best candies, but that hope had dissipated as the war grew grimmer. By the time they had moved here, no magical children went trick-or-treating anymore. It carried with it too many risks: poison, hexes, curses. Halloween was no longer a time of celebration and joy. Tonight would be like any other night—an evening spent listening to the news for more deaths, more disappearances. Because they had to. Because to not listen would be to live in the dark and imagine what was going on. She had once thought this would be worse, but the rising death tolls and news of attacks were beginning to make her question this.
Finally Lily rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Just like she would on any other day.
As she bent down to reach under the bed for her shoes, her finger brushed against something that made her pause. She groped around and extricated an old black-and-white moving photograph, covered in dust.
And froze, half-crouching on the cold floor. What she had expected to find was maybe a picture of James playing Quidditch, or of her, or maybe even of the two of them together. And for a second she had thought it was the latter, as she was in the picture—but then she saw who it was next to her. It was not James. A young Lily stood next to a thin, sallow-faced boy with lank black hair. As Lily watched, a half-playful, half-mischievous expression crossed her younger self's face, and she leaned up to kiss the boy's cheek. His scowl broke into something that might have been a smile.
Where was this picture taken? she thought, trying not to look too closely at the eyes of Lily in the picture. Or of the boy. I have no memory of this. And what on earth is it doing here? This sort of thing didn't belong in the house of a happily married couple, not with kisses being planted and smiles being given to awkward, unpleasant boys who called their supposed friends Mudbloods. It was an artifact, ancient, belonging to another person in another time.
You haven't spoken to him for years. This is not him suddenly showing up in your bedroom, Lily! It's only a photograph. So stop…stop it. She realized to her horror that tears had started in her eyes. And she couldn't stop looking at the photograph. Watching the poor stupid children continue to perform their silly, ignorant teasing and laughter, with no idea of what was to come.
"Lily?" James called from downstairs, and her fist made a clenching, startled movement on the photograph.
"Yes?"
"The coffee's ready, want some?"
"Just a minute!" she called back, standing up. She realized how ridiculous she was being, acting like she was hiding something from him. But she stuffed the picture in her dresser drawer anyway, even moving some of the things in it around to better conceal it. I'll throw it away later, she told herself. Then she closed the drawer quickly. As she exited the room to go downstairs, she turned her gaze from the mirror, not wanting to know what she might glimpse there. Anger would be nice, but she wasn't sure that was what she would see. She had the feeling that what might appear in her face would be closer to sadness and regret.
Her hand shook when she poured her coffee. "You all right?" James asked.
"Fine," she said, smiling weakly. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Why, indeed.
James walked over and kissed her cheek. Lily had to close her eyes, trying to stop the memory of her own kiss on—his—cheek, all those years ago.
"Do you want to go for a walk later?" she asked on impulse. It had been too long since they'd spent any sort of romantic, as opposed to domestic, time together. They had once gone for long walks in the park, watched any number of Quidditch games together—and later, when they'd first come to the house, he would play the piano and she would smile. And laugh. She felt a small sense of victory that they had once, even in the midst of the war, found time to enjoy themselves. This sense of victory burst with his next words. "Sorry, love. Got to go down to the Ministry. Order business. Maybe some other time, though?"
It wasn't his words that bothered her. Order business came first, she knew that; it was one of the things they had both agreed on even before they got married. It was the tone of his voice as he delivered them. There was no disappointment in it, nothing that would indicate he felt that he was letting her down. It was the sort of voice he would use if he were informing her that they were out of instant coffee, would she be a dear and buy some later?
"Maybe," she responded, and that was that. In the minutes that followed, she watched him stand up from the table, put on his coat, and walk out of the room. She didn't catch a glimpse of him as he left, her gaze instead remaining fixed on her still mostly full cup of coffee, her back to the door. She didn't even turn to try to look. She guessed there would really be no point.
A/N: Please review!