Lily
by : epiphanies
One day, you forget who you are. You forget who you were and who you can be, and what you once thought about being. You forget about the you that everybody knows, and the you that everybody cares about. You forget yourself.
And all the world comes to a stop.
You used to love jelly tarts and now you push them away from your plate. You loved getting good grades and raising your hand in class, and now you never do. Your teachers look at you expectantly and you think, "Well, somebody else must know it." And none of them do, but you still won't raise your hand. You twist your wrists together and pull down your robes over them. You curl your hair about your fingers. You wipe your eyes every so often. You can't remember what it's like to do well on a test, or what its like to get every question done before the time is up.
One day, time stops in one second and you believe that indeed the world has ended.
You see him in the common room all of the time, and when he brushes past you he smells like cinnamon. You can remember the smell of his hair, and the elastic of his suspenders beneath his robes. His glasses can't hide his brilliant eyes. Eyes that are deceiving, eyes that undress you. Eyes that were once kind. Kind, until they saw the world and decided that betrayal is much easier to get what you want in a quick way.
He told you that your hair was like cherry blossoms. He touched your skin and he drank you in, and he said that he loved you more than he had ever loved anybody, that he wanted so badly to love you. That he had trust issues, and you said you understood. And when he came to you the next evening and said, "I'm sorry, I can't," you pretended that it didn't matter and that you would still talk to him, pretend nothing happened. Pretend that the world hadn't stopped the moment he walked into the common room the evening before.
Time meant nothing to you anymore.
Whether it was a week or a year, it felt like a combination of both and you never felt well again. You felt sick in the mornings and it was only so long before people started figuring out why you spent your morning classes in the washroom and had your mother send bigger robes. And he knew. But he never said anything, never said any more than, "Hullo, Ginny," in passing and, "Thanks Ginny," for passing the gravy.
Thanks, Ginny.
You decided to go home for a bit. You didn't have to tell your mother for she already knew. She consoled and yelled a little and then quieted when she found out about him. She threw a dish one night and you understood, and you made a plan to fall down the stairs. But you could never go through with it.
Time never stood still again.
Hogwarts was a thing of the past. Classes, wands, even magic was over. Everything was over. You were nothing, and all that was left was that little bit of him left inside of you, growing, taking over. With it's green eyes, like his. And sometimes you just couldn't stand it any longer and did nothing but sleep for weeks.
Harry didn't stay at your house the next Christmas, or summer. You never told Ron, and Hermione had only guessed, but you had never nodded. You didn't know what to do but call the baby Lily. And then hell broke loose.
He came one day with flowers and you stamped on them, leaving he and they on the front door. You told him, screamed that you didn't need him because you already had him everywhere you went. You screamed that you wish he had only smiled and said it would be all right. You screamed and cried until your knees grew weak and your sobs grew greater and greater.
You lost her, Lily, you know. And the world is slowly passing away, and you haven't seen Harry for so long that you forget what colour his eyes are, besides green. You put flowers on her grave every week and grow more, and you made a memorial for Harry too, because he was as good as dead to you.
And the world never stopped after that.
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