The first time someone asked me why I love you, I didn't know what to say.

It was a question I was neither expecting nor accustomed to, one of those off-guard queries that always seem to manifest themselves when you're nursing a good bottle of Firewhiskey and are otherwise incapable of logical speech. Of course, there is only one kind of person who would put this particular question to me during such a state, and that person was hardly any less the worse for wear than I was at the time.

I remember that day well. We sat slouched at the bar, the two of us, my lips wrapped around my Firewhiskey, his similarly occupied (that is, once he'd disentangled them from the rather luscious barmaid, who - her uses exhausted - was now being gifted with his Invisibility Treatment. Sirius will never change – I know this, and yet it always amazes me how absolutely thorough he is at times in his dismissal of women he does not much care for.)

We had reached an unenviable stage in our drinking, which meant that the two of us were hovering precariously between Too Drunk to Talk Coherently or Accurately Remember the Night, and About to Reveal the Contents of my Lunch to the Entire Bar. Sirius, needless to say, was not so much hovering as lurching; the alcohol he had slopped down his (and, in the process, my) T-shirt bore strongly-odoured testament to that fact.

'Jaaaaames…' He fixed me with one bleary eye and opened them both as wide as they would go in a misguided attempt to restore sobriety, looking amusingly (at least to my drink-sodden mind) like a short-sighted owl in the process. He carried on speaking, stretching my name as far as his slackening mouth would allow. 'Jaaaaaaaames…'

I turned to face him, but it was difficult – his head kept dipping about the place and I followed its movements with my own, swaying it from side to side.

He began to laugh, that odd yelping laugh that so characterised him. 'Head still you prat, I trying talk to you.'

There is a universal language for DrunkSpeak, completely foreign in its indecipherability to the world of sobriety, and Sirius happened to be fluent in it. Luckily for him, on this occasion at least, so did I.

'Whassamatter?' I slurred. Happily, the ungodly hour ensured that the bar was by now depleted of most normal people, our drinking companions now entirely composed of two ageing witches in the corner (one of whom had defiantly magenta hair and kept winking less than covertly at Sirius, who either ignored the two of them or simply had not picked them up on his radar), a couple of wizards dotted around the place and the barmaid.

'You know Leeeeely?' Sirius went on, swigging his drink and lurching rather violently. I put up a wobbly hand to steady him and he grinned, displaying outrageously white teeth (not his own, in fact, but owing to a rather clever little spell we'd discovered the other day. Not that he would ever admit that to anyone but a Marauder, of course.)

I was, by now, utterly perplexed. There is no state more confusing in the world than when you are inebriated to the point where someone asking you your own name would render you silent for several seconds as your drink-sodden mind tries to process both the question and the answer. To then have someone in a somehow even worse state than you ask you a question about someone you've never heard of is beyond baffling.

I had no idea who this 'Leely' was, though I had the dim sense that I really ought to. I grew frustrated as I tried to match a face to a (rather unfortunate, to my ears) name and it continued to elude me, dancing in the shadows of my memory and taunting me.

And then, suddenly, clarity. A flash of red streaked the shadows, burnished gold, and suddenly I knew who 'Leely' was. It seemed ridiculous that I had been unable to discern any form of identity when the face of the owner of the name was one I could have, and have, mapped from memory, eyes closed.

It was you, of course.

I clutched at the threads of you now, my mind suddenly cleared. The streak of red-gold widened to a slash, spun itself out to form the reams of your hair, wrapped around my hands as I kissed you in my mind.

I could see you as clearly in my mind as I could then see Sirius, bleary-eyed and still irritatingly happy. I saw every detail, without filter, without fantasy, just as you were. I saw the little blister on the top of your lip that threatened to split when you smiled, that I would insist upon kissing despite your protests.

I saw your smile, a slice of sunshine. I felt the burn of your kiss, the outline of your lips leaving an imprint upon mine long after they were gone, the ghost of a kiss. I held the weight of your heart in my hands, like golden air, and I clung to it, feeling its solidity, its goodness. I thought of your hands, how the feel of their long fingers stroked along the length of my own calloused ones, how they were always so still, even in the face of your anger.

I saw you in all of your moods, your phases, your emotions. I saw you weak with happiness, the gold of your laugh filling the air with such light that all faces turned to catch what they could of it, to soak it in. I saw your face darken in fury, as sheer and impassable as sheet ice, though your eyes belied the fire in your soul. I felt the sickness race to my stomach as I saw sadness tinge your eyes, and I cradled your heart, carefully collecting the poor shards of it so that when it seemed utterly broken, I could piece it back together for you.

I could trace every contour of your body, blindly, instantly. I knew that had I been asked, I could match the honey-milk of your skin to you unhesitatingly. I could taste you on my tongue, a deliciously dizzying taste I could never explain even to myself, and just saying your name was like having jewels in my mouth. The smoothness of the dappled skin across your shoulders seemed made for me alone, kissed first by the sun and finally by me.

Sirius' voice broke through my now-sober reverie, slurring his words less pronouncedly than before. 'Why you love her so much?'

I turned to face him, sure of my answer.

'Because she's Lily.'

I wrote this after thinking of the first sentence and going from there. I'm not sure of the final sentence though - I was tempted to make it 'Because she's half of me' but thought it might be a bit too soppy and Hollywoodish. Thoughts?