Hey everybody! Here is the story written for the Woman in Black challenge at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges forum! Featuring Lily Luna Potter...hope you enjoy!
He's just sitting in the old Muggle coffee shop – he minds his own careful business. And then she walks in, just like she has every day – except he hasn't seen her in a few weeks. She is exactly like how she always is…
…except that today she is wearing black.
He's always called her the Woman in White – because she's always sparkling, glittering, bright, burning white – pale skin, fiery hair, and she almost always wears white. She was so white, so pure, so clean, so careful, so sweetly innocent…
Now the Woman in White is the Woman in Black and he wonders if she's been to a funeral.
But no.
It's casual kind of black, a loose cotton black dress that makes it about a third of the way down her thighs. Black leggings, black boots, and a single ebony streak in her blazing red hair.
Almost wanting to ask her – he has never spoken to the Woman in White – the Woman in Black – but he knows the Woman in White. He's not sure if he knows the Woman in Black. But he feels like the Woman in Black is here and she's been here before.
Some things have always come easily. But remembering the Woman in Black is like forgetting words you've always known, like realizing all along you've been singing in a lilting voice.
Like the Woman in White's lilting, lifting laugh, or the Woman in Black's soulful solitary sighs.
He measures up his courage and he sits down across from her.
He asks her if she's in mourning, looking her straight into her clear blue eyes, ringed by thick lines of black, black, black.
Yes, she says, smiling wistfully, I am mourning a very great loss – the loss of myself.
And he's not sure how she lost herself – her soul – to be honest he isn't sure if he wants to know. He's not sure what happened to the Woman in White but he wants to know her name because he wants to meet the Woman in Black again.
She says it's Lily.
And he realizes that this is the once-awkward scrawny redheaded girl that he knows from the school days in a time long ago, the one he was cruel to.
And she probably doesn't know – recognize – him, because he dyed his white-blond hair black long ago.
As she speaks, he admires the changing shape of her lips, the careful grace of every line of her being – everything from the curl of her burning hair to the drape of her black dress – and he realizes that somewhere through the years she got beautiful.
But somewhere through the weeks she got terrible.
The most terrible kind of beauty is the kind you never see coming.
Somewhere through the days, the weeks, the months, the years, she got terrible, and now she is the Woman in Black.
The Woman in Black is beautiful, stunning, terrible, wistful, lonely, wandering…
Lost.
And he looks upon a lily in the fields that clothes itself in pure white and he knows that no Lily should be clothed forever in black.
So what did you think? Thanks so much for reviewing! Please review and tell me what you think! All flames will be used to toast marshmallows and make s'mores. Love always, Lily