Prompt: Lily's parents died after an attack and she thinks it's her fault but James convinces her otherwise and maybe some kissing :))

Rating: K+ (death mention)

The letter is short. It starts with a "Dear Miss Lily Evans" and ends with a "Yours Sincerely" from some ambiguous Ministry worker, but it still takes a second or so for the two sentences in between to sink in.

Killed.

Lily reads it again, green eyes widening and heart beginning to pump wildly. There's a sinking feeling in her stomach that she knows has nothing to do with the breakfast that she's eating, and her hands start to shake as she skims over the letter again.

We regret to inform you that at six o'clock this morning, during a raid in a Muggle town…

The thin parchment that holds the words in place wobbles, and the letters blur. Lily intakes a gulp of air and exhales shakily, not noticing the way that her friends frown worriedly at her as she stands quickly and drops the letter on the table like it is on fire.

Mr and Mrs David Evans were killed…

There is a weight on her heart as she runs. She runs like she's being chased; she runs because she is in disbelief. The words that she left behind at the table are seared into her eyelids, and her vision seems to distort in the liquid welling up in her tear ducts. She's made five paces out of the Great Hall when the first sob tears through her, loud and large and ruining. She sweeps around the corner and turns into an empty classroom, sinking down against the wall and hugging her knees to her chest.

They are dead. Her parents, the two family members that she holds most dear, are gone, murdered in cold blood by pureblood fanatics. Death Eaters. Never again will she kiss their cheeks or hold their hands or smile at them, because they have gone to a place where she will not.

The grief gnaws at her stomach and Lily feels sick, pushing down on her nausea in between sobs that make her whole body vibrate and shake as warm liquid trickles down her cheeks. She digs the sharp edges of her fingernails into her palms and scrunches her fists hard against her shins.

Lily cries for what seems like hours, but she knows that it hasn't been long when there is a soft knock at the ajar door. A tousled head of hair pokes around the doorframe accompanied by an anxious look. James walks into the classroom and sits down tentatively next to Lily, moving close to her so that his left arm wraps around her shoulders and her head drops down into the crook of his neck. She lets her tears fall onto his shirt, little drops of moisture that sink in to the starchy fabric.

"Lily," he says in a low voice, "I'm here for you if you need someone."

She sniffles a little and murmurs a word of gratitude, and he responds in kind by dropping a kiss to her hairline. She shakes against him and he hugs her tighter as her sobs begin to fade into little hiccoughs. Slowly, she removes her head from his shoulder and sits straighter, wiping at her nose and cheeks with the sleeve of her jumper. She leans back against the wall.

"What am I going to do, James?" she asks hopelessly, grief overtaking her. "My parents…"

"I'm sorry, Lily," he says sincerely, and he takes her hand.

"This is all my fault," she says, squeezing her eyes shut as tears threaten to fall again, "If I wasn't a witch this never would have happened, it's because I'm a muggleborn that my parents are –"

She breaks off as the hysteria creeps up on her, a newfound guilt working its way into her head and consuming her with a kind of pain that one would not expect to find in a seventeen year old girl. James swears under his breath and pulls her around to face him, hands lightly gripping her shoulders as he lowers his head and speaks urgently.

"Lily," he says firmly, hazel eyes behind glasses roaming over her flushed face and bloodshot eyes, "It is not your fault."

"But if I hadn't come to Hogwarts, if I hadn't been a witch, then –" She wails and covers her face with her hands, not caring that her boyfriend is seeing her so undone and broken.

James takes her hands gently, pulling them to his lips where he brushes his mouth over her knuckles. Then he drops them and reaches towards her, wiping the moisture on her face away with the pads of his thumbs and resting his forehead against hers, his hands curling into her hair.

"Lily," he says quietly, and the sound is so intimate that Lily is sure that if she hadn't been crying, she would have blushed furiously under his steady gaze.

Unblinkingly, he continues. "It is not your fault that you are a witch. It is not your fault that you are a muggleborn. There is nothing wrong with being a muggleborn, and it is not your fault that prejudiced idiots cannot see that. It is not your fault that there was an attack."

She looks at him closely, finding no wavering in his expression or lies in his words. She shuts her eyes briefly, the words of the letter still imprinted into her mind. Lily moves forward a fraction of an inch and brushes her lips against James'. The kiss is short and lingering, an apology from him and a way to forget for her. When they break apart, James holds her in a tight embrace and she kisses his jaw, curling into his side.

Lily falls asleep first, her hysteria giving way to exhaustion as she rests her head in James' lap. He looks down on her, sweeping a wisp of hair away from her face that holds so much pain and sadness. He can see it everywhere; in the clenched fists against his chest, the frown that lines her mouth, the furrowing of her eyebrows and the dried tears on her cheeks. A kind of determination blossoms in his chest as James also succumbs to sleep: she may be broken, but he will help her to heal.

A/N: Hi, hope you enjoyed the drabble! I'll be posting all my tumblr prompts over here (jily ones) from now on, so if you have a prompt for me please send it over to my tumblr - I'm lilypxtter over there. Leave a review if you can please!