I'm SO sorry about this outrageously late update, everyone. I don't blame you if you won't continue to read. But...I still hope you will, LOL.

Amanda: Thank you very much!

LittleSunflower: Wow, thank you!

Siriusly.Mad.for.Sweets: Aww, thank you. I really appreciate that!

GoddessoftheMaaN: I hope you like this update as well!

A/N: This fic is rated M for a reason. Turn back if you're squeamish. Although, there's not much "M" content anyway.

V.

I'm standing before a towering yet drooping Willow by a small bank, except that there is no sound. All is in stillness, staunch silence. The river below begins to softly whisper to me a marred melody, one that I can faintly recognize, but which is broken as though someone had ripped its song out and left it with mere words. Useless words.

Do you remember me, Lily?

…No…

Or is it that you don't want to remember? the river murmurs, almost knowingly.

The Willow's leaves finger my cheeks, touch my tears, and hangs its melancholy branches into the river. Drip, drip, drip – it drops my tears back into the river's gentle, flowing depths…

I don't want to remember. It hurts too much, I finally answer, shutting my eyes from the memories.

"Lily."

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"…I'm not sure."

"I thought so. You still haven't learned to think before you act, have you?"

"I never will," I answer, opening my eyes – for I know I can' t bother keeping them closed anymore. Dad never tolerated being ignored.

His brown eyes were smiling at me, like they always used to when my five year-old self came home, bouncing because I had drawn a picture for him…or when I received my letter from Hogwarts…or when I fell in love with James. Those eyes, so welcoming, so accepting – the eyes that had never failed to put me in the place that I belonged in.

"What are you doing, poppet?" Dad repeated, folding his arms. "This is a dream. You can tell me everything."

There was darkness below and above us, and we were suspended in mid-air. Dad was facing me, wearing his favorite checkered shirt and lucky pair of trousers – the ones he swore had won him every single chess game he had ever played. Just the mere sight of him brought tears to my heart; my heart, and not my eyes, because I couldn't let Daddy see me cry.

"I don't know," I whispered, wanting to jump into his arms, but at the same time escape far away from here. I couldn't deal with this…not now…but I couldn't help it. Even though this was a dream, I couldn't help not being captivated by my Dad's presence, the one that I had been wishing for so many times.

"The Willow knows," Dad teased, the wrinkles around his face fanning out into the "rays of sunshine" I had dubbed, ever since I was old enough to crawl into his lap and trace them with my small fingers. "The Willow can tell what you feel, Lily. Remember our days by the bank? You and I always played that game…whichever direction the Willow's leaves blow, that's the way we'll take to go home."

I gave him a small smile. "I'm too old for the Willow, Dad. I'm too old for everything."

"No one's ever old, poppet," Dad rebuked me, shaking a stubby finger. "You're as old as you want to be. And lately you've been wanting to be too old for life."

I examined him, my eyes memorized by his ruddy cheeks, the dark red hair on the sides of his head, the way his hands always found their way into his trousers' pockets…"I'm just living up to my responsibilities. Someone has to take care of Gwen."

"And are you really taking care of her?" he asked quietly, appraising my face as well.

Caught a bit off guard, I stared at him. "Of – of course. I visit her everyday, I bring her favorite things, I talk to her, I make sure she's always comfortable –"

"No, I mean do you take care of her," Dad interrupted, arching his furry eyebrows. "Taking care of Gwen means taking care of her yourself. The Lily who's been with Gwen for the past two years isn't Lily Evans. It's her shadow."

At this, tears really filled my eyes, and my voice cracked as I tried to continue. "Daddy, I've tried – I've tried so hard to be the Lily I used to be. I just can't, I can't! I can't be carefree anymore, I can't laugh all the time, I can't believe in the best in people, I can't assume that everything will have its own happy ending. I just…I'm not able to anymore."

"Well," said Dad, rubbing his bushy beard with two thoughtful fingers, "Why don't you try being the Lily you want to be? Now there's an idea!" He looked enormously pleased with himself, wearing the same beaming smile that a winning chess game always gave him. "I liked the old Lily better. The one I knew before she was swept off into her own little ideals, trying to save the world with her own aspirations of what an actual rescue is."

"I joined the Order so I could help save lives, Daddy," I said, shaking my head. "But look where it got me! My whole family is practically dead and my friends are threatened by merely communicating with me."

"Did you think it would be easy?" he demanded, planting an intense look on me that made my shoulders stiffen. "Did you think that you could win this war against Voldemort with your hands tied behind your back? This isn't one of the fairytales or pirate stories you grew up with, poppet. There are bound to be sacrifices –"

"But not something like this!" I shouted, backing away from him. "Not something like losing everyone I loved!"

"That is what rescuing means, Lily Elizabeth Evans!" My father replied calmly. "Risking your world, your loved ones, yourself to save the lives of innocent people. When you told us you joined the Order to fight against Voldemort, your stepmother and I were so proud! We knew you had what it takes, but I was afraid you were still a child to understand what you were getting yourself into."

He stepped towards me then, his eyes as warm as ever. "My child, you have the great heart needed to risk everything. That's why you're still standing, after everything that's happened. Everything had been handed to you, and then it was lost. But you're still trudging on, trying to take care of Gwen and living for her. However lost you yourself might be, you haven't lost your heart. You can never lose your heart poppet, unless you willingly choose to lose it. And you're on that path now, Lily."

Ask the Willow, the river whispered.

-----

VI.

"Lily," a deep voice murmured into my ear.

My eyes flew open, and I found myself looking at my night table with my alarm clock (whose alarm never works) ticking the time of seven-thirty in the morning. The morning's rays of light shed over my room like a blanket of warmth, caressing my bare skin.

Then I felt fingers – firm, masculine ones – stroking my bare shoulder. I suddenly realized there was a warm, muscled, very male body next to me in my bed, under my yellow cotton sheets.

Oh, no.

"Lily," James repeated, draping an arm over me, his mouth just above my ear, his breath cuddling my lobe. "Are you awake, love?" As he softly nibbled my ear, delicious heat burned through every inch of my body... and my mind suddenly had a flash of our bodies slick with sweat, rolling over my bed in fervant ecstacy...

I pulled the sheets up to my mouth, my mind racing with an effort to remember everything that had happened last night…and then I couldn't stop the memories: the gentle whispers, the urgent sighs, James leaning over me, slowly and steadily pumping with my legs around his waist while my mouth made love to his mouth...

I tried not to notice the toned muscles of James's bare arm as it snuck its way around me, his body pressing against my back, his skin's heat dancing with my own, teasingly, temptingly.

"Ah…why do you ask?"

"You were just murmuring something," James answered, his voice thick with sleep, and I had to fight a pleasant shiver. "I thought you were having a nightmare."

Then the memory of my dream shot through my mind's eye: my dad…a river…the Willow…whispers and a melody, broken in its tune…

What are you doing, poppet?

"What are you doing here, James?" I asked abruptly, turning to face him, the sheet still pulled up to my nose. His hair, messier than ever, made James look like he had a wild night…I flushed brightly.

James looked taken aback, for his drowsy eyes opened to meet mine in confusion. "I – we –"

"I know we had sex. I mean, why did you come back?"

He pulled himself up, placing his head on his upraised palm and peering at me. Black hair mussed, his morning stubble starting to cover his face, and his naked, toned chest staring at me, he didn't look that intimidating. No, indeed…but I forced myself to concentrate on his face, which had never failed to lie to me, no matter how hard he tried.

"I came to see you," he replied simply, hazel eyes warm while casting me a devilish grin. "And I must admit, I received a better greeting than I expected."

A deep blush washed over my face, but I tried to push it down – vainly, and consequently it succeeded in making my face look like a tomato. "This was a mistake, James. I never –"

"You never what?" he asked, reaching over to pull down the sheet. "You never wanted to kiss me? You never wanted to make love to me?" He gave me a crooked smile. "That's not what you told me last night, in my arms…"

"I was caught up in the moment," I interrupted, refusing to let him cast his spell over me again. "Last night was –"

"Wonderful," he said huskily, caressing my face with his thumb. "Marvelous. Magical. Yes, I think those are the right words."

"They're not," I breathed, his face closing in on mine before I could protest. I resigned myself to him, yielding to his disarming kisses all over again. I didn't want to fight it, because I now recalled what I had seen in his eyes last night, what had pushed me to kiss him, what had urged us to make love.

As our kiss deepened, I wrapped my arms around him, trailing my fingers down his back and through his hair, losing myself in our connection. He tugged at my bottom lip with his own, stretching our kiss, and I pulled him closer, melding our face together so that our breathing was one. James then started tracing my face with his lips, as though he wanted to memorize every inch of it.

"I've missed this so much - spending my mornings with you," he whispered, finally pulling away and leaving me breathless. His voice was just as tender as his lips, making my heart soar with the wings his eyes had given me last night.

"Or spending my nights with you," I murmured, lacing my fingers around his neck, casting my eyes down to examine the sheets between us. How much is between us still….

"But you know this can't continue, James."

His lilting kisses into my hair paused, and he readjusted himself so he was sitting on his side looking at me again. This time the loving desire that engulfed his eyes now broke down, to be replaced by a shrewd observation. "What do you mean?"

I cleared my throat while wishing to clear my thoughts as well, but I met his eyes without restraint. "I don't want you to think last night wasn't special for me, because it was." I reached out my hand to hold his, caressing it like I had caressed him last night, and I continued, haltingly.

"But I have to admit that your coming here was something that I had not been expecting or wanting. I was afraid of what you might bring with you, James…my past. I didn't want to remember the Lily that existed in Hogwarts. She was the one who was part of another world, a dream world. And I couldn't bear taking a glimpse of that world, because I was afraid that I'd wish to be back in it."

"And you don't want to be back in it because you think you'll be let down again," James finished in a soft voice, eyeing every crease in my face that was the result of so many doubting and harried nights.

"Yes." It had always been like this between him and I. I wasn't surprised that our connection hadn't been crushed despite these long two years. "Besides, I can't risk our relationship after what happened."

Sighing, James tucked a tendril of my hair behind my ear. "Why don't you let me make that decision?"

I shook my head firmly. "It's not only you, James. It's Gwen. If I'm involved with you, the Death Eaters might go after Gwen, too. Everyone knows by now that you're in league with Dumbledore."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"For some people, it is."

"What he's doing is heroic, Lily. He's doing something that the Ministry is not even capable of doing – Dumbledore is uniting the people and taking a stand against Voldemort!" James stared at me. "Can't you see that? You were the one who first told me meabout the Order, remember?"

"James," I began, choosing my words carefully, "I thought I saw that, once, but it's not a part of my life anymore. And I'm not criticizing you for allying with Dumbledore…that's what I've always loved about you," I added, kissing his chin, "You stand against the odds, no matter how dark they may seem. But I have to take care of Gwen. She's all I have left in the world."

"So what am I? Chopped dragon liver?" he scowled.

"You're James Frederick Potter," I said, brushing his messy hair with my hand. "And you'll always have a place in my life. But nothing else is possible for us right now."

"All right, then let me tell you something," said James, fixing me with such an intense, probing look that made me feel as if he was undressing me emotionally, "When I saw you last night, you're right, you weren't the Lily Evans I had known at Hogwarts. You aren't laughing all the time, you don't seem carefree, and you're not as bold as you were before…."

Suddenly my dream from last night rushed into my mind, and I recollected my father's words…

"I liked the old Lily better. The one I knew before she was swept off into her own little ideals, trying to save the world with her own aspirations of what an actual rescue is."

"But you're still Lily," he murmured, cupping my face with his strong hand. "When you kissed me last night, I recognized you as the Lily I'd fallen in love with. The Lily who cares more about others than herself, who doesn't care what anyone thinks, who has an inner strength that's made her survive everything that's happened to her." Then his face hardened, and he took away his hand, leaving me alone again.

"But the Lily Evans I knew wouldn't succumb to all her fears like this," James went on, shaking his head in disbelief. "She'd find another way to live her life. She'd go back to the Order, go back to the magical world, and make those Death Eaters pay for what they did. But most importantly, she wouldn't give up on hope so easily."

With one final look that sent chills to my heart, he reached for his clothes and was dressed before I could muster a word, then disapparated.

-----

I took the river's advice. After all, at this point, I didn't have a choice.

That same afternoon on the day James left I pulled on my heaviest coat and walked into the steady rain. Faint rolls of thunder greeting me as I crossed the street into a deserted corner behind my flat. It was crowded with rubbish bins and broken crates since it used to be an ally to a store that had once been next to my flat, but it's been closed off for several years. Now, it was the resting place for street cats and your average dog-sized rat.

In other words, no one would see a strange woman in a trench coat disappearing within the blink of an eye.

So much for my not-using-magic-unless-I'm-at-work deal.

Within a second I was facing a small forest off a northern motorway near Surrey. The wood was unchanged since the last time I had been there: its towering oaks and mossy hills spread out before me as old friends, grown old from progress outside its depths, as though it were untouchable by such things as time.

I knew I'd find my answers there.

Come, come, it says, Come and we'll answer your questions, just like when you were a little girl.

Will you? Will you give me real, full, everything answers?

Everything is such a small word, they murmur.

I walked towards the lofty trees' whispers, the gentle rain stroking their leaves and causing them to sparke like tears. Creaking branches moved in the whistling wind, stretching and pointing out the way for me.

I soon found the bank where my father and I had played, frozen in time like the rest of the woods. It was located on an isolated spot at the edge of the dense forest, and the little river ran just as musically as it had done when my seven year-old fingers splashed its depths. A willow's leaves trailed over into it just like my fingers had, and as I turned, I saw the old Willow, gnarled withdignity as it stood behind me.

Ghosts of the past crept over the still bank as I stared at the willow, their soft voices flowing in the wind. Istood, my breath caught in my throat, as I saw all that I had wanted to forget…

A little girl, her bright, fire-red hair done up in pigtails, ran toward the Willow. She grasped its wrinkled bark with her small hands, bouncing and laughing. Then a man, in his thirties, rushed up to her, panting but laughing as well. Their game had finished at the tree, and the girl had won, her triumph expressed in hugging her father with delight.

"Got here, first Daddy!"

This vision evaporated into one of the girl, this time older, her eyes dreamy and her lips spread into a smooth smile. An air of happiness and satisfaction with the world around her danced with the castles in the air that drifted over her head…

Before I could utter a word, this apparition drifted into another of the same girl, her hair darkened into a deep auburn, her green eyes glistening with hope as she walked along the bank. She patted her left palm with the broken stick she was holding in rhythm with her steps…

One, two, one, two, one step, two steps…wandering, never taking a thought to where she was going…traveling where the larking wind pulled her, where the rushing water pointed her to…

Gasping, I clasp a hand to my mouth, muffling my words. "I remember this."

How could I have forgotten? This was the night when James had left for Auror training, the night before the Death Eaters' visit at home. I wanted to get away from Petunia's bragging about her fiancée, away from my parents planning a wedding shower for her…

And I came here, because this was where I had felt more like myself than anywhere else, even in James's arms.

"One, two, one, two," the girl's ghost murmured, her stick echoing. She treaded the bank's muddy sides with bare feet, coming toward me. My eyes fluttered closed with memory as she drifted through me and stopped at the Willow.

"No matter where I go," the girl said to herself, examining the stick before tossing it aside and examining the Willow with a smile, "I'll always come back here, where I hid my hopes and dreams. They'll never go away, will they, Willow? Point me in the direction I'll take to go back home."

The wind rustled the Willow's leaves and branches, and the girl followed their direction with curious eyes as they aimed my way.

Then she disappeared into the mist that was crawling its path over the forest.

What are my dreams, my heart asks into the air. What are my hopes? I don't remember them. Did they go away from here? Did they leave when they saw I wouldn't come back for them?

I pulled my wet hair back, rain still coming down around me, almost protecting.

Didn't anyone ask that? What do we do when we've lost ourselves?Life has nolost and found box, and the future holds empty promises for someone who doesn't have a past.

I remembered last night's dream, and then recalled what the forest had just reminded me of. My past. Maybe it's not as scary as I thought it was. Was the past really responsible for what happened to my parents, to Gwen, to me?

But, despite what would happen that night, the Willow - fate, the supernatural, I could believe in anything ever since I became a witch - had pointed me back home. Back home to witness my family's murders. Does this mean their deaths had to happen?

One thing I felt that I knew for sure. My family wouldn't want me to die, too.

The empty room in my heart began to swell with the memories that started to knock on its door, and a small smile came to my lips. How could I forget what my past offered to me: the sweet memories of my loving father and stepmother, of Gwen's vivacious laughter, of my love for everything that grew?

Just like this forest. This forest that is prodding me, urging me, pushing me to remember who I was.

I was that playful little girl. I was the dreaming young teenager. And I was the hopeful, curious, yet determined young woman that asked the Willow to show her the way home. Because, after all, none of us are sure of how to go back. Trekking into what we know is sometimes scarier than going into the unknown. Without someone to show us the way, we wouldn't know how to go forwards or how to go back.

And then I knew what I had to do with what I had left of my hopes and dreams...I had to decide whether they were worth saving.

-----

VII.

"Lily, I assure you we'll do our very best," the Healer consoled me, placing a bracing hand on my shoulder.

I swallowed thickly as I saw Gwen, white as marble with her honey brown curls spread around her face. "You're my last hope, Fabian. Muggle doctors have done all they can…if you can't –"

Fabian Prewett shook his head, giving me his usual crooked smile that reminisced of our old days at Hogwarts together. "Untrusting as ever, I see. Well, let me put it to you this way: since the outbreak of the war, I've worked plenty on cases like your cousin. Shocked and comatose because of the Cruciatus curse's effects – it's not abnormal at all. I mean, two years ago, we didn't have a chance of treating cases like hers. But with all of this new research lately," he added, arching his dark brown eyebrows at me, "We're getting most cases like Gwen's cured."

My eyes lit up, and I broke into my first genuine smile in two years. "Really?"

"Really." Fabian grinned, patting me on the back. "I can't make any promises, but..."

"That's all I can ask for," I nodded, running my hands over my face. "And even if - even if you can't do anything at all - well," I swallowed, gazing at Gwen. "Well, at least she'll know I did my best."

"That's all she could ask for, Lily," Fabian reassured me.

I sighed, breathing in the fresh air that flowed from the open window. "Right, you're right."

I turned, my whole body more fully alive than it's ever been, and headed out of Gwen's room at St. Mungo's. Just as my hand reached for the brass doorknob, Fabian called, "Hey, Lily."

"Yes?" I asked, facing him.

"Welcome back to the magical world," Fabian said quietly. "We've missed you."

Smiling again, I nodded. "It's great to be back home."

I walked out of the hospital, my head held high once again, the colors of the world sharpened and thriving around me. Inhaling a revitalizing gulp of air, I breathed in the Lily I had lost, and she sank inside me.

But something was still missing. My eyes trailed over the bustling London street, the chattering of the crowd, the whines of cars and trucks, and the crashes of construction work deafened to my ears. An optometrist's office was across the street from me, its cheesy advertisement sign in the shape of giant glasses, staring at me.

James.

If I ask you to, will you come back? If I ask you to, will you give me everything once more?

James, if I ask you to, will you love the new Lily?

-----

He came back.

And that's the first thing I remember. At least, after I woke up to find my reality and fantasies dissolved together, like twilight mixed from night and daylight. Just enough light to see, but also to dream as well.

I achingly melted into him, yearning for everything that he offered me in our soaring kiss… the everything he had promised to me and that I now reclaimed once again, this time with the wisdom and smile I needed to have in order to understand it.

But James offered me much more than that. He knew me better than anyone else, save for my parents and Gwen…I had found myself through their help, but I couldn't have done it without James's love that overflowed me, like a refreshing sea wave that turned me inside out and exposed my fears and hopes nakedly on the warm beach under the light of his eyes.

But all he did was envelop me with himself, giving me the reassurance I needed, thawing my heart. Yet James's possession of me was tenderly captivating while at the same time gloriously liberating. He knew me, and he let me go, watching with a wide grin as I walked away, treading the caressing ocean's gentle surf flowing beneath my wandering bare feet.

END