A/N: Heavily Redone!
His words echo in her head as she sits on her window seat. Love? It has been years since she's heard him say that word. It has been years since she was able to associate that word with his feelings for her. Love? She thinks again because the shock of him being here still has not hit her. She sits transfixed at her window staring at the spot he was just moments before unable to process the fact that James was here. Unable to process the fact that he did something she had given up on. He came to rescue her.
The door creaks open and her mother's small form enters the room. Her green eyes survey the elder woman without seeing her. She looks passed her mother's form, looks passed the cold eyes trying so hard to appear warm and looks into another time when she had been so happy. She looks into another time and sees only his face, only hazel eyes that seem to her to be utterly perfect. She doesn't see her mother until she speaks her name, until "Lily?" falls out of her mother's lips. She looks at her and snaps back into the present. She snaps back and begins to cry at the shock of him being there. Love, she thinks again this time realizing that James does need her.
Her mother puts her arm cautiously around her as she cries and Lily shoos her overtures away. She lightly pushes her mother aside as her tears stop and she looks at herself in the mirror. She's only twenty-six. When did her eyes become so old? When did the sparkle leave her face? She looks at her mother with stony eyes, hating the fact that she's there, that she sent him away, and signals for her to leave. Without question her mother is gone.
She looks back to the mirror and sees herself as she was a long time ago. She touches her pale face, runs fingers through her smooth red hair and slowly sees the arrogance come back to her eyes. She slowly sees wisps of her former self returning and in that instant she knows it's him. Without even being there he's fixing her, making her feel alive again and she knows that only one thing could make her feel this way. She knows that she loves him as well. She looks around her room, sees the suitcase lying by the bed and her first though is to go to him. Her first thought is to go to him and then she remembers the coldness of their house, the darkness she once lived in and fear replaces some of her happiness. Will it be different?
She looks back toward the mirror. It was once so simple, she thinks as she surveys her smudged cheeks, the redness of her nose. It was once so easy to look at him, look into his hazel eyes and know she loved him because of the feelings a simple glance, a simple touch of the hand would make so many emotions she'll never be able to explain burst inside of her.
She sometimes wishes to be a child again, to be seventeen. She wishes to go back to a time when she never had to question her spontaneous thoughts. She wished to go back to a time when she didn't have to question him. She once knew that she loved him. It was an innate feeling inside of her and she never had to wonder. It was only Lily and James, no other factors, no other people. But, she thinks as she wipes away the last of her tears, when did it become more than Lily and James?
She suddenly closes her eyes in pain. Gabriella, her beautiful daughter she loved more than life itself. Everything about Gabriella was precious from her little fingers to the arrogant glint in her gorgeous eyes. She was going to be a beauty, she knew that. Gabriella was already growing up with the looks of her handsome father, with a dash of her beautiful mother, and anyone who looked at her could see what she would have become. She used to call her Bella, Lily's nickname for her from the cradle. Bella, because she couldn't get over the beautiful olive coloring she inherited from James's family. Couldn't stop staring at the emerald eyes with more passion and personality than Lily's eyes ever had.
She blamed him for so long. She blindly blamed him for Gabriella's death because she wanted to blame anyone but herself. Blamed him for all these years because he became her perfect scapegoat, the perfect vent for her grief. And she began to believe in his guilt because it was better than the night of the funeral when her thoughts were accusing herself. It was better than that night, a month later, when she sat in the bathroom and felt the in some way it had to have been her fault. It was an accident and for so long she has known that. She has known that he wouldn't harm a hair on Gabriella's head because James adored her. How he used to dote on his first born child. He loved Gabriella so much and Lily even had moments of jealousy (immature jealousy) because she had to share James' heart. She was his clever Gabby, his witty little girl who would grow up to fascinate the world.
She looks away from the mirror and her eyes rest on her jewelry box. She opens it slowly and takes out the silver necklace with the lily charm on it. She looks in the mirror again and feels inside of her a need to put it on. She unclasps it, puts it around her neck, and clasps it again. She touches the lily and closes her eyes. She remembers the day by the lake when he gave this necklace to her, the intense glow in his eyes. Her eyes suddenly shoot open and she feels herself smiling through her thoughts of him. Feels herself wanting his arms to be around her.
She turns around and looks at this room of her childhood where she knows she doesn't belong. This place isn't home to her anymore. James is her home now. She doesn't belong here. She goes to the closet and takes all the clothes she brought with her from London and puts them messily inside the suitcase. Forgetting to take the necklace off she rushes downstairs and sees her mother sitting in the living room drinking tea.
When her mother turns toward her Lily is surprised to see that she asks no questions. Surprised that she seems to know exactly what her daughter is about to do. All she does is get up and hug her, hug her little girl and let her go for a second time, let her wander off to that magical world she knows next to nothing about. She kisses Lily's cheek gently and whispers good luck in her ear. Whispers 'go get him' with a small, sad smile on her face looking at her beautiful daughter and knowing it's only because of her love for James that she could glow that way. An instant later Lily disappears from her house with a loud crack.
When she gets to the house it's quiet and empty. She walks up the stairs slowly and hears every creak each step makes. She stands outside their bedroom for a moment, surveying the white door and breathing deeply knowing there's no going back on the path she came. Slowly with a shaky hand she turns the knob, opens the door, and walks inside.
The first thing she notices is the unmade bed. She puts her suitcase down and walks over to the bed as if to make it when a bottle of her best rum catches her eye. She walks over to it slowly and closes her eyes when she realizes he's been drinking ever since she left. She closes her eyes she realizes that her leaving has made him as broken as she once was. She puts the bottle down, smells the crystal glass and makes a small face before looking on the desk and seeing a blank parchment on the table with the day's date, November 21, 1979, and realizes that this was the letter he was supposed to send her today. She smiles sadly, looks around at the disorder around her and sits on the bed in the exact spot she sat before and waits for him to return.
It takes him a few hours to come home. He went out with Sirius and drastically wished to go to the nearest pub when Sirius insisted that they hang out at his place instead. They spend the day at Sirius's work, flying together on break-time, procrastinating when Sirius should have been working, and by the time he leaves to go home he feels not a bit better than he did at her house that morning.
He walks home, as he always does, because he always feels he never gets to that house slow enough. He never used to think that he was going home to anything. He thought it was merely a house, once joyous, now reeking the scent of a broken home and a depressive, alcoholic wife. He was a fool. He knows he was. He's had her for so long but has just ignored it, ignored her and now, he thinks, now it's too late. Now he has to go home to an empty house, sleep in an empty bed, and live an empty life he wishes he could run away from. He sighs when he reaches the front of his house and opens the door wishing that he had come home nice and drunk to soothe the pain of drinking from those crystal glasses that were a wedding present from his great Aunt Mildred.
He isn't sure what he thought when he first saw her sitting there, but knew she had to be a trick of his mind, a figment of his imagination. He just stood there in the doorway of their bedroom and gaped at her sitting on their bed, a suitcase placed a few feet away. He knew, just knew that she couldn't be real. A sweet voice snaps him out of his dream,
"Hello James." She says quietly looking at him. He stares at her.
"Lily?" He asks, "What are you… why are you here?" She smiles slightly.
"It's my house too, is it not?" She says and smiles wider at the confusion evident on his face.
"You left." Is all he says. She looks away.
"Do you not want me here?" She asks looking into his eyes earnestly.
Something within him seems to snap and he suddenly processes everything.
"You're here." He says with a quivering voice, "Oh God you're here."
She stands up and walks over to him.
"I love you," She says looking into his eyes, "and I'm sorry for forgetting it." Tears slowly fall down her face and he lifts a hand and wipes them away.
"I love you, too." He says, "I love you so much." And he leans in and kisses her. Kisses her with all his dormant passion because it's been too long since he's tasted her lips, breathed in her mesmerizing scent. "I love you." he says one last time into her hair before she pulls him in for another kiss. They make love that night for the first time in over three years.
A/N: Okay, one more chapter and then I'm done. I don't know if I like this so much but it's the only way I could think of doing it. I'm sorry to disappoint you all but this story will have a happy ending. So unlike me I know. But don't forget to REVIEW!