Frosty Teacups

or

The Emptiest Chair in the Universe

Knock knock.

Pause.

Knock knock knock.

Longer pause.

BAM BAM BAM —

The door flew open. 'What in the hell?'

Emmeline's screwed up face and bed-head appeared in the dimmed hallway of the Gryffindor girls' corridor. 'It's twelve thirty!' Frowning groggily, she leaned in and inspected her friend's face. 'It's twelve thirty... Usually you've been asleep for at least five hours. Something's happened... Lil?'

After a pause that probably clued Emmeline in to the anticlimactic nature of the next statement, Lily mumbled, 'I can't sleep.'

The brunette gave her a look of extreme disdain. 'Right,' she drawled, 'and so you wanted to make sure that no one else does. Come in, you self-centred harpy.'

Inside the darkened dormitory Dorcas and Marlene were blinking blearily awake. In the beds furthest from the door, Mary and Alice had managed to cling to their dreams.

'Burn her, she's a witch,' Marlene slurred crossly from behind her curtains. In the four-poster adjacent, Dorcas yawned widely. 'Is that Lily?'

'Good evening,' the Head Girl replied rather meekly.

'Good evening? Tosh. Good morning, more like it.' Giving Lily a hard pinch as she passed, Emmeline blundered back to her own bed and fell into it, exhaling loudly. 'What's the sitch, then, Evans? Make it a good one. Vance has kept me up several nights already —' A rousing chorus of groans cut her story short before a hissing Dorcas reminded them that there were sleepers in their midst. There was a moment of silence as Alice rubbed her nose in her sleep and Mary gave a little piggy snore.

Then Lily said very faintly, 'it's tomorrow.'

'What —Halloween?' Marlene asked loudly and crossly, and Lily could feel her frown from across the room. 'How did you manage to miss that information? There are several million pumpkins decorating the hallways —'

Hushing Marlene, Dorcas sat up quite suddenly in her bed. Sleepy as she had been, she now fixed Lily with a sharp stare. 'Hogsmeade. Your date.' She paused. 'It's tomorrow.'

As confirmation of the statement Lily swayed on the spot.

'Carriages are leaving in fifteen,' came the call down the corridor.

'What?'

Lily turned wildly on the spot, searching for the clock.

9:44.

'Is that the time?' Her throat began to close up. 'I can't breathe,' she panicked, 'I'm not joking, I actually can't breathe —'

'Shut up,' Marlene said firmly, marching out of the bathroom, grasping Lily's collar and looking her squarely in the eyes. 'You can't breathe because you're talking too fast.' The brunette busily combed a lick of red hair into place. 'You look great. He will look great. Everything will be fine.' She slid Lily's purse onto its usual shoulder. 'And do you think that no one has ever been on a first date before? You are so selfish.'

Tap tap tap.

Lily whirled around at the sound, but it was only Yorick, Dorcas's owl. Distractedly brushing away Marlene's fussing hands, she crossed to the window just so that she could keep moving. 'That'll be the Prophet,' she muttered as Yorick skipped over the windowsill and stuck his leg out to let her detach the affixed envelope. 'Dorcas was complaining that it didn't come at breakfast —'

Lily Evans.

It wasn't for Dorcas. And it certainly wasn't the Prophet. It was a letter with her name written on the front in familiar, pretentious script.

'Petunia.'

It had been almost two months since she left her sister that letter. A reply, finally. Heart rising, Lily's fingers scrabbled at the seal.

'Don't.'

Marlene's voice was sharp. 'Don't read it.' She was standing very still on the other side of the room, her eyes fixed on the envelope in her friend's hands.

There was a pause. Lily didn't understand the look on Marlene's face. 'But it's from Petunia,' she said slowly, laughing once in an incredulous kind of way. 'It's a good thing, Mars. She's replied!'

'I just don't think it's a good idea before the date.' Marlene was speaking in an oddly restrained manner. 'It wouldn't hurt to save it til after.'

Impatient now, Lily shook her head. 'I know her. If she were still angry she wouldn't have replied at all. She's an expert in the silent treatment.' Trying to ignore the look on the other girl's face, Lily ripped open the envelope and scanned the writing with feverish eyes.

It was almost unintelligible with crossings out and scribbles, but the letter read something like this:

Lily,

I didn't want to reply for obvious reasons, but mostly because this has been really hard to write. But it's necessary. I've got two points to make.

One. You don't understand what a shadow you have been for me to live in. No matter what I do in life, it will never be as grand as being able to turn teapots in to rats or whatever it is you do up in your magic castle. You're magic, Lily. How does anyone live up to that? I wish I could say that I love you enough to be happy for your epic life, and I do love you, but who you are has shaped me entirely, and not necessarily in a positive way.

Did Mum tell you I've been seeing a counsellor? I would have thought so. Anyway, I've got self-worth issues, apparently. She says I can't blame this on you because you can't help it, but if I don't blame it on you who else can I blame it on? You represent everything I can't ever be, Lily, and so we will never have that relationship you're looking for, no matter how much you or I want it.

The second point is that my allegiance needs to be to Vernon now. I'm marrying him. He's my future. In a way, you represent the past for me. Unfortunately he still hasn't accepted your condition and I very nearly lost him because of what you are, even if that's not your fault. He's the one thing that feels like it's mine, Lily. I cannot lose him. I don't think he'll ever accept you and thus I'm presented with an ultimatum. If I want to have a happy life with him, I have to choose him entirely.

This hasn't been an easy decision for me to make. Despite everything I love you incredibly. I'm sorry that it's not enough. Our lives are so utterly different. I can't see how they are supposed to correlate any more, especially since I'm getting married and you're about to finish school and start building a life in a world that I can never even touch.

Please know that I love you and that I am sorry.

Petunia

The letter fluttered onto the carpet like a fallen feather. It really should have slammed to the ground with all the forces of gravity. It was made of lead, not feathers.

Marlene's eyes were heavy on Lily's face.

The utter silence that filled the room now was pierced by the last call.

'Get a move on, laggards —carriages leave in five minutes.'

It was a cold day, apparently. Was it a cold day? Lily wasn't quite sure. It was only late October, but they were talking snow. Or maybe that had been last year.

She was very late. One of the last of the Hogsmeade-bound to leave the castle. She recalled asking Marlene to go on ahead of her. Although she probably should have made the girl stay. She was very late. James would be waiting.

James.

He was standing alone in the middle of the courtyard. Waiting for her. He was wearing a nice pair of cords and a collared brown shirt that he had obviously tried to iron, for there was a small burn mark on the back left shoulder. His hair was lacquered back as if with some industrial strength setting agent and he had his hands shoved deep into his pockets to stop from mussing it anxiously. For anxious he was; Lily knew this without seeing his face. James Potter was terrified.

She observed him for a moment, filing away all these little heart-stopping details of him for later, when she had room inside of her to weigh them tenderly as normally she would.

Please know that I love you and that I am sorry.

She shook her head so fiercely that it ached for a few moments afterward.

'James would understand if you want to postpone,' Marlene had said before Lily banished her, 'and it might be better if you do. You owe it to yourself and to him to do this properly.'

Lily had become furious at that. 'Not a chance,' she remembered spitting. 'How long have I waited for this? She can't do this to me.'

It probably wasn't a great idea, but she wasn't in the right frame of mind to know that. It was as if hurt had filled her to the brim and it was sloshing about inside of her, diluting her reason. Thus it was in defiance of Petunia that Lily had numbly drawn her arms through her winter jacket, checked her blank expression in the mirror and now approached James Potter in the courtyard before their very first date.

'H —' It came out as a squeak. She tried with more force, and it came out as a bellow: 'HELLO.'

James's back straightened so quickly he might have given himself whiplash. His eyes were as wide as a baby's and he looked so young and nervous and eager that a little pang of feeling managed to shoot through the hurt and touch Lily. Then his forehead creased as he took her in.

'Are you okay?' he asked tentatively.

I have to choose him entirely.

Lily smiled as truly as she could. She wasn't going to tell him. This was going to be perfect. It would be perfect.

Filch stamped their hands with the Hogwarts seal on the way out. It was a mark that could not be replicated except by the exact stamp that gave it, which allowed the teachers complete control over who came back into the castle after the Hogsmeade trip. Lily and James had sat through those teachers meetings at the start of term; the ones that discussed how security was to be increased tenfold this year. After the attack on Pferdefliege, no one was taking any chances.

It was a fine —if cold —day out, but the marks that glowed on their hands —those and the ministry sanctioned Auror who handed the couple into the last idling carriage —felt like compressing bands around Lily's chest. Another reminder that the world could be awful. No, that it would be awful. And the words of that impossible, chilling letter were circling through her head as if on a rotisserie. Who you are has shaped me entirely… You represent the past for me… We will never have that relationship you're looking for…

Sitting next to her, James was quiet. He could sense that something was wrong, but he was being sensitive. Lily felt her carefully constructed smile crack. This wasn't what she had wanted. Everything felt wrong.

'That's enough, Lily,' James finally burst, frustrated. 'Something's happened, and you're not telling me what it is.'

It was a quarter past twelve. Less than two hours had passed since they had met in the courtyard. The two head students were sitting in the new pub in Hogsmeade —the Hogs Head. Though a little shabby, it was where the older students preferred to convene as there weren't any over-enthusiastic third years milling about and the bartender could be bribed to serve harder beverages.

Shopping was over quickly: it didn't take long for Lily to buy red ink and James only tried on a few pairs of Quidditch gloves. After that they walked through the town, stopping here and there to look at what had come in at their favourite stores since last term.

On a normal day the pair could have lit up the dullest of places with their banter, but today… silence. James had valiantly raised many topics of conversation and Lily just hadn't been able to find the words necessary to keep them going very long. Despite this, she had been trying fiercely to make it work. When James told a joke, she laughed until her throat ached. The smile never dropped from her face and soon her jaw was aching. Soon it had gotten too cold outside; the wind was absolutely icy, and now they sat opposite one another in the Hogs Head, Lily, ghost pale, and James reddening with anger.

'What is it?' he asked, eyes wide, lips tense; on the defensive. 'Is this the frantic backpedal? Have you realised that this isn't what you wanted?' He sat staring at her for a moment, but her mind was frozen and he received no response.

'I was so —' James stopped, dropping his eyes to the tabletop. He shook his head. 'I was terrified of this.' His voice was quiet and strained, his gaze riveted to the saltshaker; his face blank.

The Hogs Head had never been stiffer with silence. If silence were gelatine, and the pub a bowl of jelly… but Lily didn't let herself carry on with the metaphor. James was red-faced and she was pale and… everything was breaking.

She had tried —Merlin, she had tried —and she had come close to telling him so many times in the last few hours. But every time his face had fallen and her mouth had opened to explain, a little bubble of hope that she could fix this trainwreck would rise through her. Telling him would certainly mean the end of today. The date would go from struggling to failed in an instant. He'd feel sorry for her. They'd reschedule. No, she had thought each time. Petunia would not ruin the last first date she ever intended to have. And so she had tried harder. But it hadn't worked.

Her eyes ran over him in those last few desperate moments as the synapses in her brain fired madly but created nothing worthy for her to say and him to hear. The brown shirt had been rolled to the elbows. Was that a symbol? It was, certainly, but she couldn't think what it meant. His shoulders were slumped and his hands were out of sight, beneath the table. His long nose was trained downwards and his eyes looked as if they desperately wanted to close. Absently, in some distant corner of her mind, she wondered what possessed him to continue gelling his hair when it never lasted over half an hour. By this point his wig had been so thoroughly finger-combed that it looked soft and entirely untouched by product. Maybe it was the reckless optimism he displayed in any situation... except ones where Lily was involved. With her he always expected the End Times.

Well, he often got the End Times.

You've got to tell him. Just tell him about the letter.

Her mouth was opening —

—but James was standing up. Quietly; without grandness, he pushed his chair out and fished a Galleon from his pocket. 'I hope I haven't wasted your time.' The words were so quiet and chilly that, as effectively as bleach takes colour from clothing, Lily's explanation dissolved from her mind.

And then he walked away. Head pointed down, hands deep in pockets, James walked away and left the tavern door swinging gently behind him.

Sometime later —she wasn't sure how long —someone sat in the chair across from her; the emptiest chair in the universe.

It was Sirius. When his mouth opened all of his words seemed really slow and sort of blended together. 'I spoke to Marlene. You shouldn't have done it, Lil…' He was shaking his head. 'Why didn't you say anything? He would have understood…' He looked like he wanted to shake her. 'You should go after him, tell him —I was watching you, anyhow, why didn't you say anything?' There was an intense, heated look on Sirius's face that very few were lucky enough to see. 'He loves you; he'll listen. He loves you, Evans.'

Like a tap in a drought, Lily's jaw loosened as if to let out a precious, life-saving drop. But nothing came, and Sirius sat back, sighing. Pulling a crushed cigarette from his pocket, he lit it with the tip of his wand. There was a window behind Lily's head; he pushed it open with a few fingertips and tapped the ash from the smoke into the frigid air outside. An arctic wind blew onto Lily's neck and the tip of the cigarette winked at her from across the table.

Then the bartender came past, furious, herding Sirius and his glowing cigarette from the already smoke-stained pub and Lily was alone. She sat there, catatonic, until frost was crawling across the interior of her teacup.