Chapter 14: Pure Magic

And if anything would cure the ache, it would be love.

Lily looked James fully in the eye, balancing the fairy dust on her finger, not sure what to make of it. He pinched a little off her finger and threw it over her, laughing lightly at the way the sparkles glinted here, there, and everywhere she was. And she threw the rest over the both of them, smiling, too, at how pretty it was.

If everything is as real as this, she thought madly to herself, then everything is beautiful. I am beautiful. The world's perfect, and nothing else matters.

They smiled at each other like the world had just ended and that was okay. Something about her felt different. And James said softly that she was everything he thought she was, and he was so, so glad of it. He pulled her over her crossed legs, and she pulled back, holding on as tight as possible before losing her grip on him.

She kissed him above his eyebrow. And he rolled over her, letting his robes fall from the bed as she pulled his shirt off too. "You," she said, "are unconditionally perfect. Did you know?"

He growled, pushing his lips to her collarbone, licking in little circles. Her skin was fire to the touch, she thought. And he was beautiful, an alabaster god sewn into pretty, golden skin. And her? If she was his, then that was good enough. She groaned at the way his hands pushed up her shirt, at the way she so naturally arched her back in appreciation, at the way her skin was bare to his. His lips were softer than hers, and she didn't mind.

"Lily," her name was in his breath. "Lily, I can feel you in the way my heart's beating. I can feel you through my soul."

She pressed her fingers into his back a little harder, wondering if she could feel herself there too. She kissed him just above her fingertips, then on his own fingers, and he stroked her face thoughtlessly before leaning down into her breast. He kissed the dark satin of her bra, not thinking about the way she gasped, at the way her chest drew in, or the way her hand clutched at the hair at the nape of his neck as he did so. He kissed her there again, and laid his head down.

"I wasn't lying, Lily," he told her, his words butterfly kisses on her heart. "I wasn't lying to anyone, was I? I want you here again so you can tell me how wrong I am at everything. And how all I do, how all I'll ever do is hurt you. But I don't know how to take it back."

"James, I don't want anything from you. You don't have to tell me what you've done." She wasn't sure she meant what she said because it hardly turned though her mind before it whispered out on her breath. All she wanted was to be touched. Words were too much, too concrete. "James, I think I've done things you'd never believe. And I don't think I'll ever tell you them."

"I'm wicked, Lily."

"I know you are. It's beautiful. It's godly."

He smiled and his eyes sparkled so much she thought he was crying. He seemed as if he was falling back from her, and she gripped his arms as tightly as she could to stop it. And she realized rather suddenly that he was crying, and his tears were slowly rolling down her breast.

She pulled him to her, kissing his eyes, the ones he'd closed because he was ashamed she'd see all he had done there. She kissed an eyelash and a little scar on his hairline. She kissed him beside his lips, once on either side. And then he opened his eyes, and he looked at her like he'd never seen her before.

He rolled over, so she sat with legs on either side of his own, and then he sat up too, and looked at her, just looked at her.

"It's fucking unbelievable where we've been, Lily. I saw you on the train, and my heart beat when I realized that you didn't hate me. You'd changed, and you'd grown, and I wanted to know why. And I loved everything you could ever be."

Lily blinked, and reached behind her, slowly unhooking her bra.

"James," Lily said, looking though him, looking though his sleeping eyes. "James, would you wake up?" She thought she saw his insides stirring up in his thoughts, and she thought she saw the way his heart fluttered and woke. "James, open your eyes; I know you're up."

Tight-lipped, she stared down at him, as he looked up to greet her. Her eyes were guarded, cold, conserved to say nothing to him. He reached up, but she pulled away, without words, and wrapped herself tighter in a scarlet sheet.

"Lily, we've broken about a hundred school rules today. Do you really have to look at me like I've done something wrong? I haven't done anything you didn't do." His words were muttered through a soft groan, but his voice was thick with intensity, nonetheless, and his cheeks were rosy with satisfaction.

"You gave me a journal. You gave me one, and I didn't remember it. And you didn't tell me." She wondered vacantly at the way her heart felt like a frost had taken it into a clutch so tight, that she couldn't control herself. "Were you ever going to tell me that?" She could feel her thoughts rippling at the back of her mind where she couldn't quite reach them; she could feel the way they surged with hatred. And love. Her words were hot on her tongue, despite it, though they were very distant from herself and she wasn't sure it was her speaking. "Jamie, I'm dying to start living again. And I'm Lily, and I know that, but I'm not alive right now. Because something happened and I can't remember." She stopped, not sure what to say, wanting to slap James until he bled, until he hurt, until he couldn't feel anything, just like her.

She blinked, starting to believe that she did feel, that she did love, that she did fear. She blinked again, and moved to reach into the back pocket of James' jeans for the red and white pack of cigarettes. In a wrist's flick, she drew one from the pack, then proceeded to light it with a platinum lighter she had hitherto taken from James' nightstand. She drew in the smoke until she coughed, and brought the cigarette so close to her nose she thought the intensity of it would make her sick. And she inhaled again and sighed.

"James, I just fucked your brains out and you're looking at me like I'm crazy."

James sighed too, and said, "Not so crazy. Just beautiful," Laughing like her voice was an old friend of his, he leaned up and kissed her nose, and lit a cigarette for himself. He laughed again though the smoke, wrapping an arm around her, telling her it was good to hear her talk like herself again.

She thought she should put out the cigarette on his arm and hope it scarred his far-too-perfect skin.

"You know, Lily," he said though another set of laughs. "You've got hangovers from hell."

And she just blinked and blinked, raising up her chin a little, and then settling to curl up into James's warmth. "I'm in love with you. And I don't think that's very fair."

"Why's that?"

"You don't want me to love you. And I don't know why. And there's a journal somewhere that just might tell me." She stopped for a moment, breathed, and stubbed the Marlboro into the wall. "I've done something awful, James. I've done something so bad that you can't beat it."

He kissed her neck, rolling over her, kissing her chin, and drawing circles around her thigh, moving inward, until she gasped despite herself. "Shut up, Lilia. I don't need to know."

"I do."

Lily sat on her bed, deciding absently that James' was much more comfortable, but she couldn't concentrate on the thought, losing it somewhere in a lost place of her mind. The world had fallen in a different direction, and she wasn't sure why. She wasn't the same Lily Evans she had woken up as that morning. She wasn't lost or careless or slow or indecisive. She was who she had always been, yes, but what she had been had morphed into something she didn't remember it as. She rolled over onto her stomach, fingering a denim notebook and wondering what to do with it to make the words more real to her.

Alex was beautiful about the way he cried. He kept his tears in a proud way on his face. I couldn't compare to him ever, and I wish I could make it all so good. But how could I ever do it to him? And why do I have so hurt so bad because of it? I don't blame him. I know I should, he's so much older, but I can't. Maybe he should have known better, but it doesn't matter now. I wanted him to do it. I liked it. How couldn't I have? It's like, the other day when I was thinking about how sex with Potter would be – yes, so, I've thought about it, but it isn't as if I'd actually do it, is it?- and I was thinking about how it would be beautiful. But what Alex and I have done is holy, even if we both hurt because of it. I don't think it would be like that with James. Potter, I mean. I don't want to stop using surnames because then I very well just might run off and have sex with him. And I'll probably fall in love with him before I'm through. What a holy terror that would be!

-Lily

She sighed deeply, feeling her breaths move her stomach, and snapped the notebook closed again. Somewhere deep in her, Lily could still feel the shadows of complete and total ecstasy building in her over and over again, swimming blindly in images she didn't want to remember. She could see the jagged, black fringe of James's hair falling over her eyes, and, for some reason, she felt as if this repetition of motion and memory and bliss wasn't a first. And at that moment, laid out straight as she was, eyes closing despite her will to stay awake, she just wanted to know who Alex was. She wanted to know why he cried.

"Lily, lovebird, if you never wake up, I'll cry for you."

Lily blinked, forcing a smile, wanting to cry. "Would you? I'd feel much better about my death if you would." She felt her breath shift around her mouth and she waited for him to kiss her. His lip twitched as he did so, and she hit her forehead to his, blinking back a laugh. "I think I'd love you to the moon, James, if you weren't so damned strange. Would you tell me why you sitting on my feet?"

"I'm not sitting as much as I'm hovering, Lilia. I don't think I'll stop either, so don't even ask." He tapped her cheek with a finger and she kissed the nail he'd hit her with. "Do you still think you could love me that far up?"

"I'm not sure. You're blocking my view."

"I flew very far of the ground to block your view. I don't plan on moving now." He kissed her nose, turning to look away as Lily told him she was sure he simply hated flying up to see her. The blue jean journal he had given her four months prior lay shut just above her head, and he watched it for a moment with a crossed look of bloodlust and wonder.

Lily followed his gaze above her, weaving her fingers through his. "Would you like me to read you some? It's all a little strange and disconnected, but you might like to hear a little: a good deal of it concerns you."

James shrugged as if he didn't care, but his eyes brightened with a strange light Lily wished she could read. For a moment, he looked as if he had been offered the truth of life and wasn't sure what to say in affirmation or decline because he knew nothing else would matter once she had told him. "Read me something sexy, okay?" He shook some hair from his face and smiled down at the sheets like he was trying to convince himself everything was okay.

Lily breathed in deep and flipped to the middle of the book. "Sexy? Or kinky?" She answered herself for him with a little secretive smile, letting red waves of hair fall over her eyes. She kissed his jaw and fell down into her pillows. "Alright. 'I'm falling from my bed and down and down and down. And if I fall any harder I think I might die. I know I will because I like James. And I'm not supposed to. What if I fall in love with him? What if I fall apart? And down and down and down. I can hear him down in the Common Room, right through the floorboards. He's laughing and I bet his eyes are something amazing right now. I bet they're laughing too, twisting in on themselves so hard they burst outward, knocking the whole rest of the world back down again until they love him. I don't want to love him. It'll hurt so bad I'll break. And I'll die. And I'll become something new. I can already feel it happening. My god, I want to fuck James Potter.'" She paused and laughed and looked at him. "I do want to fuck you. I want to fuckyou so hard that the world twists up"

"I don't want to fuck, lily. I want to love." He smiled, and when she frowned in response, his brow creased and he tilted his head, just as she did to match. "What's wrong, ladybug?"

"Ladybug?" He nodded so she nodded too. Her eyes looked sad, though, and she continued to speak. "I just want to feel less clean. I hurt. Cleanliness hurts. I thought I was so… not this. I want something dirty and rough and beautifully physical."

"I couldn't ever… I couldn't ever. How can the world change so much in a day, Lily?"

"It can. It does." She straddled him carefully at his knees, dragging herself upward, hands moving first. She touched the crotch of his slacks decisively, and then leaned down to kiss him just above her hands. He stopped her.

"Lily? What did you find in that book of yours? What's in there that you didn't want to see?" His eyes widened. "Did you write what I did- what I said?"

Lily blinked, realizing rather suddenly that he was holding her hands so she wouldn't touch him again, She blinked again. And again, and then she began to recite from the denim notebook, "'To look at him is to look at rape. And it's strange that something so abstract to me is now so real. I hurt all over. I hurt. I hurt.'" She sighed through her teeth and tilted her head to the right. "Do you know what's happened to me?"

"I-"

"Shush, James; say nothing. I don't think anyone hurt me. I think I hurt me. I know I did. I don't think I'm even fucking alive. I think I'm living in a parallel world or an afterlife or a limbo of what I'm supposed to be. Maybe we're both dead."

"Don't say that. You're here. You're with me. I've hurt you so much already, I couldn't hurt you any more."

"Then just keep me warm." Lily whispered, falling over him.

He smiled, wrapped his arms around her, and rolled over. "I can do that."

A/N: I've been trying fervently for the last two months or so to rewrite all of what I've written so far for this story. It's difficult and it's stopped me from writing anything else. But here are two new chapters.