Feeling
Prompt: "I wasn't sure what you liked so I got you a bit of everything."
Setting: Canon, Hogwarts 7th year
612 Words
Lily lay in bed, buried under the blankets.
Despite the stove heating the room, the heavy blankets, the drawn curtains of her four-poster bed, she still felt cold.
She was beyond the tears now. Beyond the pain.
Only numbness was left.
There was a knock on the door.
Lily didn't respond.
After several quiet moments, the door creaked open. Another moment later, slow footsteps followed.
Then, a hesitant whisper.
"Lily?"
Lily's head turned.
She knew she probably should care why they were here – and more importantly, how they were here.
Because that voice hadn't belonged to any of her dormmates. The voice had been James Potter's.
The words came out gravelly because Lily wasn't sure when she'd last spoken anything.
"What do you want?"
"I brought you something, can I come in?" James replied.
"You're already in," Lily said.
A moment later, the curtain of her four-poster bed was pulled aside.
Lily squinted at the light.
Once her eyes adjusted, she saw a huge sack James was rummaging through by her bedside.
In short order, James proceeded to pull out a big bottle of Firewhisky and two bags of Lily's favourite type of chocolates and set them down on her bedside table.
Then came the books.
As he kept piling them up on the foot of the bed while Lily looked on, stunned, she couldn't help wondering if he had gone to ransack the whole library.
"I wasn't sure what you liked so I got a bit of everything," James said, as he pulled even more books out of the sack. "I mean you usually read Agatha Christie or Enid Blyton in the autumn and in winter you like to cosy up with The Hobbit or The Secret Garden or Beatrix Potter and in the spring you turn to L. M. Montgomery… And Jane Austen is probably your all-time favourite, but –"
Lily had stopped listening.
She gaped at James and the pile of books and then, for the first time in days, she felt.
It swelled in her chest, washed over her like a tidal wave.
And then she was scrambling from under her blankets, stumbling against James, winding her arms around his neck, twining her fingers to make a mess of his dark hair.
Tears, again, at last, flowed down her cheeks as she kissed James with a kind of fervour that had never possessed her before.
When she pulled back, James hugged her close but his face was stricken.
"Don't cry. Please. I came to cheer you up, not to make you cry."
Lily shook her head, her hands fisting in his robes.
"You noticed what I was reading," she said, her voice hoarse and wobbly.
"Well…" James blushed. "I hope that's not too weird, I mean –"
"Say it," Lily told him, her gaze boring into his hazel eyes. "I want to hear it. Need to."
"I'm sorry your dad died."
Lily shook her head, but her stare held steady.
"Not that. Tell me why you noticed."
James swallowed. His fingers clenched against Lily's back. He closed his eyes and let his forehead come rest against hers.
When he opened his eyes they found hers unerringly.
"I love you, Lily Evans," he said at last.
Lily drew in a quivering breath and just stayed there, in his arms, her forehead pressed against his, soaking the words in, storing them deep into her heart.
"Please stay with me," she whispered against his lips.
James held her closer.
"Anything you need, Lily."
And for the first time for a long long while, the corners of Lily's lips turned up in a smile.
Because she knew that James meant every word.
