Chapter 14: I Don't Need You to Rescue Me

Disclaimer: The creator of Quidditch, the Ministry of Magic, the Patronus Charm, and Ron Weasley...hehe...is not typing this right now. She is off somewhere writing the final book of the greatest series ever. If you would like an appointment, I can't help you.

Lily was rubbing the blanket where her arms were hidden. She was thinking about her words, and how she had tried to hide the pain from her son. It was the right thing to do, but it kept so much of it bottled up.

And then she thought of him. James Potter, the love of her life. A smile spread across her face, and she couldn't help it. It wasn't the sad smile that mixed with the tears when you were denying your own pain. It was a genuine, happy smile. He always did that to her.

"Well, enough of that, Harry. The next part is happy. I promise you that." And then she continued her story, starting from the first moment she woke up…she remembered everything, including the smell…

…

It was peppermint at first, and then a little butterbeer. The air, that is.

It was like a medley of sweet aromas, and all were so familiar. It was just on the tip of her tongue. Where did she smell all these things? They didn't match.

The peppermint, the butterbeer, the sweets and candies, and then there was the smell of parchment and ink, and something akin to a potion she had made in her fifth year. It was so familiar and yet so far away.

Then, it all came together.

"Lily? Are you awake?" It was the voice again. Now she remembered everything. She opened her eyes, though it hurt, and her sight fell upon a very happy and yet worried face. He lurked only inches from her face, as if her sight had gone, but his eyes and hair and glasses were undeniable.

"Potter, get away from me before I get a restraining order," she said with great difficulty. He laughed, and then seemed to get very excited as he shouted down the hallway.

"Madam Pomfrey! Madam Pomfrey! She's awake!"

Then, Lily realized where she was. The infirmary of Hogwarts was a place she rarely visited. Few of her friends or herself ever sustained injuries bad enough to hospitalize them.

Before she could finish the thought, or question James further, a spunky middle aged woman came running from an adjoined office. She was huffing at his impatience, but when she saw Lily she jumped and started running.

"Good," she was saying. "Now we can start the real treatment. Excuse me, Mr. Potter. Oh darling, you scared us there for a while. We tried to heal all the wounds—"

"Wounds?" Lily interrupted as her face lurched with pain.

"—But that simply didn't work. 'We need the potion' Professor Dumbledore said, and so here you go. It was brewed this morning by Professor Slughorn, it should go down easy, but if not—" She continued to babble, but Lily wasn't listening. She was looking at Potter to try to gauge how bad the wounds were. If the look matched the pain, she must look like a train wreck. But Potter's eyes remained pinned on Madam Pomfrey and a smile was all that seemed to crease him face.

Drawing Lily's attention back to Madam Pomfrey took no real difficulty. All the old woman had to do was shove the potion in her face. "Drink," she said, but Lily would rather lick a toad, from the way this stuff smelled. Madam Pomfrey must have noticed her face because she responded almost immediately, "well it doesn't smell nice, but it doesn't taste that bad."

Lily looked at her once and then chugged the glass, trying to get it over with. What she was met with was rancid milk and dung beetles. At least that was what it tasted like. She struggled to speak, "I thought you said it didn't taste that bad." She gag reflex almost caused her to throw it up as she spoke, but Madam Pomfrey hit her hard on the back and it all went down.

"Only one more glass after lunch and you will start seeing results," she said with a smile on her face. Lily, on the other hand, was thinking only of how much she wanted to punch her in that cute little smile of hers. But before she got the chance, Madam Pomfrey was gone again saying as she went, "come back after lunch!"

Lily gave the door she vacated a dirty look, and Potter laughed. She had almost forgotten he was there, but sure enough…

He looked so happy in that moment, but she didn't understand why.

"What are you staring at?"

His smile suddenly fell, and he looked at the ground, "oh nothing," he said.

"I'm sorry, Potter, I didn't mean to sound so rude, I just wanted to know why you looked so happy."

He looked back up at her with another happy smile, and then he reached up as if he was going to touch her cheek, and then thought better of it. "You look a lot better than you did."

Lily looked at him with a confused expression. "What did they do to me?"

"It's called Sectumsempra. It's outlawed, now. Most had never heard of it before, but Dumbledore had, somehow. It cuts you, like a suword would," he said mispronouncing the word sword, which he was probably quoting from somewhere. "It creates deep gashes and makes you bleed…a lot."

She thought about his words and didn't doubt it. That pain had been so great, she almost couldn't cry. Then he continued speaking as if in a blur. "They said you were lucky I was there, or else you might have died." Lily looked up expecting to see an arrogant smile on James' face, but instead was met with modesty, or something akin to it. At that moment, Lily caught sight of something. It was Potter's hand. It was covered in bandages.

"What happened to your hand?"

He looked down and moved his hand out of sight quickly, "nothing," he said simply. They went silent for a while, as Lily tried to read something from his face.

As if a spark alit in her brain, a thought suddenly occurred to Lily. "What do I look like, Potter?" His eyes shot up. He searched her face and then looked over at the bedside table where a mirror lay. He picked it up and handed it to her.

She took a deep breath before she looked into it, but she almost dropped the mirror when she saw her face. From forehead to chin she was covered in gashes. Her lip was split in several places, and her left eyebrow was sliced through like paper. Her nose sustained minor cuts, and her chin was slashed a little bit. But then her cheek…her right cheek was slashed from her temple to the corner of her mouth. It looked awful.

She wondered how James could just sit there looking at her like nothing had happened to her. Once she was done looking, she laid the mirror down on her lap. James at once took it and put it back on the table, then he shot up as if he had just thought of something.

"Are you hungry?" She almost laughed at his question, but then realized that he was genuinely concerned.

"If you had just drank what I did, you wouldn't dare ask that question." He prepared to laugh and then Lily broke in with an unexpected question. "Why did you go to Hogsmeade with Indigo?"

James stopped laughing and looked at her for a long moment. "I didn't lie to you, you know," he said after a long moment.

"That wasn't what I asked." A silence fell as he tried to figure out what to say, but inside Lily's mind was whirling. Why had she just asked him that?

"She asked me."

"Ugh! How low are some girls!" she broke in with force, but by the end she was exhausted from the pain in her face.

When she looked back at James he seemed to be insulted. "Oh, girls who like me are low?"

"No, that's not what I meant…" she faded off, what had she meant? "It's just inappropriate for a girl to ask a guy." She hoped that was what she meant.

"Why?"

"It goes against laws of nature!"

"Just like a girl trying to take on four boys who are bigger and crueler than her!" he responded, and Lily could taste the punch immediately.

"I didn't do anything!" she said with great difficulty. The cut on her mouth made it hard to emphasis any of her words.

"You were in an alley!"

"They dragged me there. First, they froze me, then they dragged me there to…" she stopped from the pain, but continued as best she could, trying to control her temper. "I don't know why I'm explaining this to you. You purebloods will never understand. Potter, they hurt me just for being born! They cut me for being what I am, no other reason!"

His face went soft as hers went harder, and then he actually reached up and touched her face. The sensation was not welcoming; it made her wince in pain as the wounds stung. He pulled his hand away quickly. "I know, Lily. I know better than you think. I remember what you said to me, however long ago it was, about having to try harder just to be able to get by in our world—" he corrected himself, "in your world. I'm sorry, Evans, I just worry about you."

"Well, that's your first mistake," she said back with little emotion in her words, though her mind was spinning. He actually remembered that conversation? He looked up as if confused, and then to the door where Madam Pomfrey had left a few moments ago. "Potter," she said to get his attention again. He looked back and she spoke again. "Potter, I don't want you to worry about me. I don't even want you to rescue me."

"Then, tell me, Evans, what do I have to do?" he was alluding to more than just protecting her, and she could feel it in the sound of his voice and she could see it in his eyes.

"I don't want you to save me, Potter. I don't even want you to say sorry. Not any more," she said forgetting for a second that she had never talked to James about that day in first year. She had never even told him how much it hurt her. But most importantly, she had never told him what hurt the most. "I want you to save yourself, Potter. I want you to stand up for yourself and what you believe." He looked up at her for one long moment. The world was spinning, but strangely enough, nothing was going through Lily's mind. All she was thinking was concentrated on staying awake and staring him down. Defiance was always her weapon, in everything. She was determined, that was her strength. James knew it, and he could barely match that fire in her eyes with his own. Rarely did he ever get close.

After what seemed like hours of staring at each other, the door to the infirmary flew open and a gang of kids came rushing in. Some were crying, others were whopping and hollering. The first person she noticed was Remus Lupin. He was smiling and rushing over to her. But the first voice she heard was Marlene's.

"OY! You better yet, you lazy sod?"

Lily almost died of laughter. The pain that was coursing through her body at smiling made the expression almost literal.

…

"Well, what do you think, Harry?" Lily said as she looked down at her glowing son. "Could your daddy and I have messed things up with each other any worse?" Harry giggled, but it was short lived. The boy was getting tired, she could see it in his eyes. Lily reached down and grabbed the blanket for the hundredth time to try and cover him again, but he just kept kicking it off.

"You know, I never told anyone this, but I was actually sad once all the scars were gone. I had never really had a major injury, and I kind of wanted to flaunt my battle wounds. Silly, huh?"

Harry laughed hysterically, and the shadow threw its hand to its face, as silently as possible.

A/N: Okay, so I'm done with that chapter. I have to say sorry, though, to ReadinRobyn. I told her I would update once I got home, and then on my way back from school my boyfriend, James(isnt that just perfect?), decided we needed to go to Best Buy. I got the first season of Will and Grace, by the way, it was on sale. lol. And then when I finally got home I got incredibly distracted. So, sorry ReadinRobyn and anyone else who wanted that update really fast! lol. Hope you liked this one. I rewrote it about...4 times. So, hope it was worth it, hope I picked the right version, lol, and enjoy. Read and review, s'il vous plait (if I wrote that wrong, sorry, its been a while!)