"Autumn"
abc.
Here I am, where I've been
I've walked a hundred miles in tobacco skin,
And my clothes are worn & gritty.
And I know ugliness,
Now show me something pretty.
I was a dumb punk kid with nothing to lose
And too much weight for walking shoes.
I could have died from being boring.
As for loneliness,
She greets me every morning.
At the most I'm a glare,
I'm the hopeless son who's hardly there.
I'm the open sign that's always busted.
I'm the friend you need, but can't be trusted.
At the most I'm a glare,
I'm the hopeless son who's hardly there.
I'm the open sign that's always busted.
I'm the friend you need, but can't be trusted.
Here I am, where I've been
I've walked a hundred miles in tobacco skin,
And my clothes are worn & gritty.
And I know ugliness,
Now show me something pretty.
At the most I'm a glare,
I'm the hopeless son who's hardly there.
I'm the open sign that's always busted.
I'm the friend you need, but can't be trusted.
At the most I'm a glare,
I'm the hopeless son who's hardly there.
I'm the open sign that's always busted.
I'm the friend you need, but can't be trusted.
"Something Pretty", by Patrick Park.
Abc.
Hi, this is an utter piece of crap I wrote in a couple of hours. It's sort of an ode to autumn, though I definitely got off track, exploring Lily's different relationships. It's a oneshot and nothing goes to deep but it's the deepest bit I've ever written from Lily's point of view. I don't know, I needed to get something creative out of me, it's been far too long. Take care.
Abc.
There was a taste, a smell, a feel to the air when autumn came that was maybe the most familiar thing in the world. It is chaste and fleeting and quite the opposite of what it should be.
It should last forever; it should go on for months and months and that feeling you get when the breeze blows through and you can smell the smoke in the air – that feeling should be one you are never without.
That autumn brought with it stolen kisses and loneliness and the end of my brief love affair. It was strange to think of him as any of the three things – brief, love or an affair. It was strange to think that he was gone, too. There was no reality anymore, everything was distorted and vague and I seemed to float on, float on, float on...
His friends were around and suspicious and flighty. Remus was a werewolf and in the Dark Lords reign – well, Sirius thought he had every right to doubt the friend he had stood beside for seven years. Sirius developed a blind prejudice toward Remus and he was always on his radar, always someone he mentioned when curious things were happening. Peter was hopeless and quiet but sometimes he would tell Sirius to lay off it, Remus was the better of all of them.
He might have been, Remus might've. He was better than James, for certain. He was better than my prat of a boyfriend who was noble and proud and brave and ran off to do the fighting everyone else was too scared to do. Yes, ran off to do the fighting while I was left to just float on, float on and there was nothing breezy or graceful about it.
Sirius kissed me a month after James left and he would write letters and he did seem to have time, he had time to sit and explain and I did not know why he couldn't have time for me, why he couldn't just be with me...
But Sirius kissed me and it was such typical Sirius stuff. It was everything every girl had said it would be. It was different and dark and he was charming and handsome and oh, his shoulders were broad and his chest fit and his hair long and he was every bit as great as people said he was. He was arrogant and quite the bastard and cheeky and could not keep his hands to himself but there was a reason all the skirts fell at his bloody feet and I never thought I'd ever kiss Sirius.
He quite liked putting his hands in my hair and when I say 'kissed Sirius', I don't mean kissed him and immediately pushed him from me. And when I say 'kissed Sirius', I don't mean 'shagged Sirius'. It was somewhere between the two, far past some line we were never meant to cross. There was a preoccupation with my legs that James never quite had and I was wearing a skirt because it was the end of summer and the days were still long and warm.
"So ridiculous," he muttered against my lips, all tongue and stubble and long, thick eyelashes.
And it was because I did not love him and half of the time could not stand him and we had a friendship that was nice and stable and he was there for me and I was there for him – But I wondered if it mattered anymore because he kissed me and I him and it was James's best friend...
James who broke up with me and James who left me crying a month ago and James who said he could not be thinking about me when there were more important things going on.
Off came Sirius's shirt and when I ran my nails down his chest, stomach, tugged at his belt buckle –
There seemed to be an urgent, sudden crush of real-world problems and there were people dying and James could die and Sirius's brother had died and we were just being irresponsible and I think we were both just beyond lonely...
James was Sirius's best friend and had left him as much as he had left me and Sirius was being paranoid when it came to Remus and it is sad to think a boy does not have a close friend in the world. Then I realized that I did not have a close friend in the world. It was stupid to move so fast with James, to be so close because I had absolutely severed ties with everyone else and it left me...
Empty and floating on and on and on.
Abc.
We shared a flat before he left and he had more money than most people would need in their entire lives – two dead parents, no siblings and a load of other dead, rich, powerful relatives meant quite a hefty sum in his Gringott's vault – so, he left it with me and I thought it was his way of being generous, of seeing to it that I was taken care of.
But I did not want to be taken care of by some long-lost ghost of a boyfriend and by the time October rolled around it had been two months since he had left me. It was funny that I could not quite remember the way he smelled – the pillows and sheets had been washed and I felt guilty for erasing a bit of him, the only part I had left.
Some days I missed him and his laugh and his glasses and how endearing he was. Others, I missed our fights and arguments and all-around banter. But most days I missed the way he kissed me and touched me and the way he sounded in the midst of sex, all breaths and moans and I love, love, love you, Lily...
He would kiss my neck and bite my lip and fumble and struggle with my bra clasp. And I would laugh and he would flush but eventually there would be parted legs and warm hands on my thighs and he would almost whimper when I'd arch my neck and he would have to touch it. He was long and sinewy and his abdominals would flex when I'd flip onto the top and his back was muscular and being so intimate and close and invasive was what I missed the most about James Potter.
Sirius would tell me I was a horrible person for missing the sex the most.
But it was easier to miss those times, to miss the passion and the nights than it was to miss the day and the love and the tenderness. I did not often like to dwell on the empty flat I lived in, to dwell on the empty closet and drawers he left.
We hadn't been together a year, were fresh out of Hogwarts and suddenly (but really, not-so-suddenly) there was this Lord Voldemort and the Order of the Phoenix and this sense of duty he had. We were nothing in the face of such an obstacle and I knew it was coming before he sat me down that day and broke up with me without the slightest look of regret or remorse on his face.
I knew he was just trying to protect me and was a bit too stubborn to admit he really was not a bad person, he really was the only boy I'd ever loved.
Severus Snape could have been the only boy I would ever love and there were complications and memories of childhood that just seemed so lost and foreign now. James hated Snape and sometimes I hated Snape and it was not a question of who hated Snape, it was a question of who did not hate Snape...
But he was different when we were kids. Vulnerable and needy and so bright-eyed for such a dark boy. He was nothing close to James, nothing like James in any way but he had known me before I was a witch, he had known me when I was so innocent and young...
I wish it had been James to have that piece of me, along with every other piece of me. I wish it was the good, sweet Gryffindor and not the Death Eater, dark arts supporting Slytherin. Sometimes I missed the boy with the long black hair and long, hooked nose because he was the first person to care about me above all others.
Remembering him was like thinking back to another lifetime and I knew Snape would never be back in my life and it was terrifying to realize that James might not be, either. Stupid, silly, brave prat of a boy, he was.
Abc.
When he left he took something from me. Before him, I had aspirations and goals and plans and I knew exactly what I needed to do, wanted to do with my life. I had morals and beliefs and I was going to accomplish so much – I knew it and everybody told me it and it seemed like such a sure thing.
It all left with him, it all went away when he went away and I was such a sad reflection of who I used to be, of who I could have been. If this was love, if this is what happened when another person owns a piece of your soul, I wasn't sure I liked it. I would have liked to remain whole and stable and a complete, sane person rather than fall in love with the notorious James Potter.
Because I had fallen in love with him, hadn't I? I had given into the advances he had been making for years and years and I had somehow become completely defenceless toward him. Once I was the Head Girl with grades and a future and now I was James Potter's jilted lover. It was heart-breaking and unfair and I wanted to be known for something other than him, something better than him.
And still, for some reason, I thought he was coming back. Some days I forgot he wasn't. I thought I was making house, keeping things going while he was gone and he would come back and we would get married and Sirius laughed in my face when I mentioned marriage. Remus was always more sympathetic, always kinder and he told me that James did love me and we both knew he wasn't stupid – we both knew he'd end up back here. Remus Lupin was maybe the best person I knew but he was a werewolf and that spelled danger in times like these.
Sometimes I thought my sister was right and it caused a horrible, sort of leaping pain in my stomach to think she may be right. She used to tell me I wasn't right, I wasn't proper in this world and I would do good to come back and be a Muggle. She was jealous, maybe, in the beginning but grew hostile and disgusted with the Wizarding World quite quickly. She told me she'd never speak to me again if I stayed with James, stayed with such an openly arrogant, proud boy. She disliked him more than anyone and sometimes I thought maybe she was just jealous over him, too.
Abc.
There was a pregnancy scare a couple of weeks before he left. I thought I was pregnant and suddenly there were images of diapers and a swollen belly, swollen ankles in my mind. Fuller cheeks – both face and bottom – and awkward movements, hauling so much extra weight around. I thought I was pregnant and I saw myself pregnant and I could not imagine telling him when everything felt like impending doom and he was leaving. Imagine – he was leaving and I thought I was pregnant and I would have a baby alone. I was terrified and destroyed and cried for days until I finally told Sirius who immediately told Remus.
It still makes me laugh to think about the almostt instantaneous moment they both offered to stick around, to help out, to play daddy to the child. Neither were rational and suggested I just tell James, neither just offered support and comfort but instead seriously told me they would help me. So, for three more days I had one definite father of my child and two acting ones. It was the greatest thing in the world to know that there were people who cared for me so much they'd change their entire lives.
And James was one of them. When I told him I thought I might be pregnant, his eyes and hand both jumped to my stomach and he tugged my shirt up over my navel and was all wide-eyed and lovely as he looked up at me.
"Really?" he asked and I almost felt guilty in telling him that no, I wasn't certain. That I was scared to take the test, that I needed to know he'd be there for me, for the baby –
"Okay, let's go." And his eyes were swimming and he may have been teary-eyed but I did not know. I bought a test that evening and he kissed me for the entire three minutes we had to wait and he promised he would not leave, would never leave if there was a baby. If there was a baby.
There was no baby and the sign was negative and so he left me. He left me because there was no baby. We weren't ready for one, we never could have had one but I almost wish I had so he would have stayed.
Selfish Lily Evans, horribly selfish girl.
Abc.
When autumn came, I finally had something else to be preoccupied with. I finally cooked and baked and decorated and actually went to the Order meetings and the smell of autumn lived in your clothes, your hair for hours after you came inside. It was inticing as much as summer made you lethargic. Nature died and people died but I never felt more alive than I did that autumn, without James or anyone.
Somehow the sky looked bluer on those crisp mornings and the leaves turned red, yellow, orange and crunched beneath my feet and I was not happy but alive, settled and willing to try, to fight, to live.
People felt sorry for me and Alice was engaged to Frank and she'd visit and make me tea and tell me it would be all right. I felt pathetic and I was not the only one missing James, was not the only one missing a loved one.
I grew up that autumn, quicker than a girl of eighteen should have to. But I grew up and I went on and he did come back to me, showed up on the doorstep Halloween night and it may have been the most monumental moment in my life when I stepped back, did not shout and let him in. He kissed me against the wall, neck, lips, shoulders and he told me he loved me and I told him I had never been so lonely, even though he was with me the entire time.
Abc.