"Everybody Hurts"
Rowan Arkenson
Summary: Everybody hurts – especially when you're in love with a girl who won't even look at you. But James will soon realise that he's not the only one with problems...
Disclaimers: I don't own the characters or the setting. JK Rowling does, and I guess she owns the general plot, but the story, lucky me, is mine.
A/N: Just a quick note to say the whole thing with Voldemort, I'd never planned to add it in, so if it doesn't continue, that's why. I'm not going to ignore it, but you know this story; it's about Lily and James, it's not about whether the world's going to be taken over by an evil wizard or not :P So yes. Thanks for reviewing the last chapter and all that jazz. Read my fictionpress stuff, you know you wanna. Oh yeah, and if I were to do an EXTREMELY rough estimate of how many chapters there are to go…I'd say around 5. ISH. Don't hold me to this. Just a guess. I may decide to add more things in, or cut a load of things out, just to annoy you :P Hehehe. –Rowanx
A-A/N: Yeah this chapter's hella short. But I don't care. Short can be good. Get over it. Look out for another chapter soon. In the true sense of the word SOON. Title of this chapter from a song by a band called ran.for.daysprepares for flames for another confusion chapter Ah but you forget. This is my story. Not yours. grinsLove you all. Please review. -rowanx
Chapter Fourteen – Everyday December
James hated it. Decided he hated it and couldn't break away from it. Hated looking away from Lily, hated her looking away from him. Hated having to pretend he didn't need to look away from her, as he and Sirius had almost reached a silent agreement never to mention her again. James hated the weeks he didn't talk to her, hated remembering what Remus had heard her talking about, hated obsessively wondering about it… Hated pretending with Sirius. Clapping him on the back. Grinning with him. Laughing about girls, lessons, teachers, friends, enemies. Hated not talking about anything. Nothing real. Nothing to do with his parents, with news in the papers of more attacks on muggles and mudbloods, with lily, with his attempted suicide…
Life was a blank. As the weeks past, James made himself appear to get happier and happier. It was December. When he was sick of pretending, it was easy enough to say the weather was getting him down. Everyone gets down when it rains, he says. It'll pass, he's just tired.
Sitting in the common room, like they did every day, they were laughing together and playing chess, like they did, every day. James vs. Remus. Sirius and Peter along the sidelines, one ready to play the winner. It was Remus who noticed, like he'd been secretly noticing for the past two weeks. Noticed when James sneaked a look outside the window, that look in his eyes…Remus would never forget it. James looked lost. Horribly, despairingly, depressingly lost, like a little child, bored, upset, sad about something he couldn't control. Remus noticed it when James said he was tired and was going to go to bed. Remus followed him as Sirius and Peter innocently started a new game of chess themselves. Remus could hardly not notice something was wrong when he walked in to the dormitory to find James crying, as if he'd tried so hard not to, and still didn't understand why he was, and it was tearing him apart.
"Prongs?" Remus said, surprised. He walked over to James who was sat on the floor at the end of his bed, knees up, arms wrapped tightly around them, looking so lost and alone. Remus sat beside him. "You've been down for weeks," stated Remus softly. "Since, and before, Padfoot…" he stopped.
James looked up. "I don't know what's wrong with me," he said, laughing softly. "I'm fine really, I'm just…"
"No you're not," Remus pointed out. "You're clearly not, mate. You're not over Lily, and you're not even over Padfoot, all the things he did…"
James sighed and leaned his head back. "Life sucks."
"Like a bitch," Remus agreed.
The two sat in silence, both unsure of what to say. James wiped a tear away from his eye. "I really need to stop crying so much," he muttered. Another awkward silence. "It's not even just Lily anymore ya know…"
"I know." Remus put a hand on James' shoulder. "I know."
It was December. Every day was December and every day brought more personified blankness to James. Empty grey skies and bitter cold winds that refused to let it snow. Not quite yet. Snow was hanging in the sky, waiting to break down on the students of Hogwarts, most of whom would welcome its unique purity in its gallons.
James was waiting for it all to break down.
Wasn't sure what would happen when it did, but he hated not knowing when it was going to happen. He hated the wait. Hated the pain and wanted to release something – anger, tears, whatever it may be. He would go mad if he didn't.
Lily. The light of his life, he could say, if he were laughing really, really loudly at the time. She was there every day and every day that she was there was hell for James. He couldn't even be near her. He ignored her in the corridor. He looked away when she called his name. He ripped up bed sheets in his room afterwards and knocked Sirius' chest over, saying it was an accident.
And he ignored it.
Laughing that he was breaking down over such a trivial teenage matter.
He could be breaking down because of the war on muggles and mudbloods and of the war against people who were at war on muggles and… Perhaps he was.
Lily was a mudblood.
And Sirius' parents were pureblooded bastards.
And he loved Sirius. And he didn't understand him. And he hated him. For that. And… for Lily.
And he didn't understand it.
But he loved her.
On the wall behind his bed he would write that he loved her, again and again. Not in a psychotic, scary and obsessive way. His hand would scratch it over and over on the wall with a quill once sharp. He would familiarise himself with how it sounded. "I love Lily. I love you Lily." And he would wonder what it meant. But at least he would know that it was true. It was easier with Lily than with Sirius. But he didn't understand it.
He ripped up bed sheets in his room and knocked Sirius' chest over, saying it was an accident.
He was past tears. But he didn't understand the anger. He hated it. He hated loving Lily, so pure. So…so Lily. In every sense of the word. She was his Lily.
He was past tears. But he cried anyway.
Because he didn't understand it.
