Recap: Lily was Imperiused, but Bellatrix lifted the curse; Gracie was attacked by Greyback; the Order fought Voldemort and his Death Eaters, and Gracie tackled Gideon to the ground to avoid a killing curse aimed their way before she passed out to later wake up in the hospital, where she tells Gideon that everyone survived and that everything is okay.

The man that looked quite like a boy in that moment opened a blue eye, testing the light. Then he opened both, taking in the glorious sight of the ceiling. "Am I dead?" he asked the ceiling.

"No," I replied shortly, leaning my head against the wall as I watched his expression. "Though I don't really understand how you're not."

Chapter Thirty-Four

Say You Will

The truth of the matter was – despite James's claims that he stepped in and saved the day with a swish of his wand – that the battle was over as soon as Dumbledore made his entrance.

And honestly, I didn't know why he couldn't have shown up just a little earlier...

The story was, as Sirius told a rather delirious me, that the Death Eaters had worked very hard to corner Dumbledore and attack him all at once. Their plan had been successful, for the most part, until Mundungus Fletcher happened to run across them. Not that he did anything, Sirius made sure to point out, but he provided enough distraction that Dumbledore was able to escape their feeble attempts.

And when he did, it was like the sky lit with fireworks of renewed vigor, of heightened spirit, and everyone began working together harmoniously towards banishing the common evil—

Well, that was Sirius's story, anyway.

"The good news is that you aren't a werewolf," he was saying from behind me as he brushed my hair back over my shoulders, meeting my gaze in the mirror. "The bad news, though, is that you still did get bitten by a werewolf."

"The healers already gave me the entire lecture," I muttered impatiently, turning away from him. "And I was fully capable of pulling my shirt over my head by myself."

He smiled. "You're supposed to be careful with your shoulder. I was only being polite."

I rolled my eyes at him.

"Hey, quit that."

I frowned and sank into the foot of my bed. "Sorry. The healers said I might be more... passionate than usual?"

"You mean, angry and ferocious and deadly." He leaned in close to my face and growled. There was a gentle stir of heat in my chest and I growled back at him. He smiled and kissed me on the nose. "They also mentioned that you'd very likely begin to prefer your meat bloody and would start to grow really thick hair on your face."

I felt my face drain of color. "What? They did not!"

He pulled away from me, laughing. "Only joking, love. About the hairy face part, anyway. Where did you want to go to lunch? Unfortunately, if you're thinking raw steak, I think we might be fresh out of options..."

"That's disgusting," I said shortly. "I am most definitely not eating bloody meat."

"Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it, yeah?"

I shook my head vigorously, and then moaned, "I really hate this."

"You're the one that goes around mingling with werewolves," he pointed out. "You're lucky it wasn't a full moon. Otherwise, this could have been a lot worse." He pressed his lips together, contemplating. "Hey, think about it this way. I bet Remus would trade places with you any day."

"Was that supposed to make me feel better?" I asked, rubbing my forehead in frustration. My eyes fell to the floor guiltily. "Remus... he knows about what happened? He said something to me about it before, but I haven't..."

"Yeah. Before the healers told us anything, he told me you were welcome to join him on full moons as his fellow werewolf partner-in-crime if you wanted. And then I punched him."

"What? Sirius!"

"Oh, it wasn't hard. He laughed." Sirius paused. "But I think he was being serious."

"I feel terrible. I'm complaining about a little scar and a little surge of undesirable emotions, while he's got to deal with an undesirable wolf-persona once a month." I exhaled deeply. "I'm an awful person. Officially."

He groaned and sat down next to me, taking my hand. "Shut up, Gracie. You've got every right to be unhappy about what happened. Just because something worse happened to someone else doesn't take away your suffering. You have every right to wallow for a bit."

"I'm fine, though. I'm just upset. But I really shouldn't—"

"No, listen. It was a traumatic experience, okay? But you'll move through it. Because, yes, it was traumatic, but frankly?—you're lucky. You're goddamned lucky and you're going to be okay." He smiled. "And that's what's important. A bad thing happened to you, but it won't hurt anymore, because scars don't hurt. You just see them, that's all. They're just there."

I looked up at him, letting his words sink in. "Yeah," I murmured with a little nod. I reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. "Hey," I said. "I love you."

"Love you too, Gracie." He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me in closer. "More than you know."

"I should go see Remus sometime, shouldn't I?" I murmured into his chest.

"Yeah." He stroked my hair softly. "You should."

"Okay then." I tore myself away and stood, once again briefly scrutinizing my reflection in the mirror. "I'll go see him now. Do you think he'll be home? I could just—"

"Hey now," Sirius interrupted swiftly, getting to his feet. "We're supposed to be going out. You and me. I feel like we haven't gotten any alone time in three thousand years. I need you to myself." He took my hands and pulled me against him, his face just bent over mine, his eyes penetrating. "Please? Just this one day?"

I frowned but didn't move. Growing impatient, he kissed me quickly and said, "Please?"

I shook my head vigorously, then decided against it, then broke away from him again. Conflicted, I said, "Fine, fine. But tomorrow, I am most definitely—"

The rest of my words were muffled by his mouth on mine again, burning with sleeping fervor, soft and warm and crazy all at once.

I tried moving away so that I could breathe a little, but he pulled me closer to him. "Sirius, come on..."

"What?" He kissed my lips, then my cheek, and then trailed kisses down my neck. "Do you want me to stop?"

For a moment I was tempted to shove him off of me and demand that we leave through the door right that instant, but after another moment I changed my mind entirely. Involuntarily, I made a small noise in the back of my throat as I pulled his face back to mine, meeting our mouths in a kiss that all at once made me feel out of control and overwhelmed.

But it was a good kind of overwhelmed, one that was blinding but exhilarating, and just a little bit consuming. I felt a fire in my chest that threatened to trail through my limbs through wildfire, and somehow I found that I didn't mind at all.

After that things escalated to an entirely different level. The combination of his hands just hardly grazing my skin and the tickle of his breath on my lips had me so disoriented that we fell back against the wall, laughing and dizzy, and probably wondering why we didn't do this more often and if, in fact, my shoulder was really as bad as I'd thought it to be.

But then I cupped his face in my hands as I kissed him and suddenly all of my thoughts were gone, melding instead into a giant flame in my mind and making the edges of my body melt. His hands firmly held my hips and he left sweet kisses along the underside of my jaw, so slowly and tantalizingly moving down the nape of my neck that I saw colors beneath the black of my eyelids.

"Padfoot? You there?"

And then the moment was gone as soon as it had come. My eyes snapped open, as did his a short moment later. Still locked in the same place, Sirius gave me a guilty thing of a smile, where one corner of his mouth pulled to the side.

"Padfoot? Sirius? Hellooo?"

I sighed and pushed him off of me like I'd been tempted to do earlier. "Woops," Sirius muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, seeming not to notice my annoyance at all. "That'll be James on the Floo. He told me he'd call, but I didn't know for sure when..." He must have noticed that I'd taken considerable steps away from him then and trailed off into a quick silence. He bounced back gracefully, and with one swift movement, twirled me back to him. "Hey, where do you think you're going?"

"Really?" I managed to say before he'd taken me back in his arms and touched my nose with his. And then before I could even return that mask of annoyance to my face, his eyes met mine and that little tickle of fire was back, sparking under my fingertips and blurring out the rest of the world.

He said nothing in response to my empty-ended question, only gave me a look that I couldn't help but smile at. The light of the morning shone in through the window and fell like stars in his eyes. And that moment, I fathomed him something more than just beautiful. In that moment, he was everything and anything.

And so when James's voice continued to ruin one of the closest moments I'd had with Sirius in months, I just squeezed his fingers in my own. "Go talk to your boyfriend. I'll go get my things from the kitchen so that we can leave, like we were supposed to." I smiled slyly and released his hand.

"Not funny," he said pointedly, and then more gently, "Sorry. It'll only be a minute, I promise."

I shook my head dismissively. "It's fine. Boy talk. I get it."

"Love you!" he sang quickly as he pecked my forehead and then darted off to the fireplace only a few strides away.

I watched him for a moment before I turned out of the room, pressing my lips into a firm, contemplative line. I heard James's voice from the fireplace again as I left: "What, did I interrupt something?"

He always did. It shouldn't even have been a question.

I found my bag, which lay strewn across Sirius's counter top rather lazily. Biting back a sigh, I went and put it back together, straightened the pile of hospital papers, threw the loose change that had been dangling around the bottom of my bag for weeks into my wallet, picked up a picture of Lily and I that had somehow ended up on the floor. My gaze lingered on it briefly—our fifth year, the two of us clad in new robes we'd bought together in Diagon Alley the day before, nothing entirely special about the photograph at all—before I slipped it back into my wallet and out of sight.

In the silence of the kitchen, things slowly began to return to me, like the fact that I'd now missed a week of work and would likely not be forgiven for such an unexcused absence. I'd owled in, but the way the Prophet was acting lately, what with the stress of the war and their rather obtuse efforts to hide what was the evident truth, I doubted they'd even minded it any attention. After all, I'd witnessed the onslaught of hate mail the main offices had received only last week...

And then there was Loraine, who I of course still remembered as I did still live with her, but seeing as she was a muggle and didn't even know there was a war going on in the first place, explaining my situation to her had been a little difficult. First of all, since I'd been in the hospital for two nights, I'd had to find a working muggle telephone so I could ring her. The difficult part, though, had been when I had to explain why I'd been in the hospital for two weeks, and then convince her that she really shouldn't visit and that I'd be home soon.

"You were hiking?" Loraine had said into the phone, a near screech because, unfortunately, the phone that I'd managed to attain sucked. "You were hiking and an animal attacked you?"

"Yeah. And they thought it had rabies, so I had to get checked out. Turns out it didn't. Not the funnest time of my life, I'll tell you that."

"Well, Gracie, you should have called me earlier. I could have brought you some flowers or a nice balloon, or whatever you give people who almost nearly had rabies."

I'd told her I'd be back that afternoon, and though she was a little tiresome at nearly all points of the day, I was kind of glad to be going back home to my flat. Not that Sirius's wasn't nice, but I hadn't really been home in a while, and Loraine was the closest I had to that. Besides, it'd be refreshing to hear her complain about her air-headed boyfriend again.

I thought back to the fact that I hadn't been home in forever. I missed the home my family had had in England, before they moved to the States. Since I'd visited over the summer I quite literally hadn't heard from them since, other than a quick little card and a small amount of money I'd received from them on my birthday. Of course, they'd sent it in American dollars, but all the same...

We don't want to be involved in the war, Grace, my father had written. And if you choose to be, we'll honor your decision. But we ask that you honor ours as well to leave us out of it.

It stung a little, reading that, on my birthday of all days. It basically said, "Don't try to talk to us because you might kill us." So I didn't, other than the thank you letter I sent in response in which I included: I will honor your decision to stay out of the war. I love you both.

And I did.

After dilly-dallying around Sirius's kitchen and then deciding he really didn't have any good food to steal in the first place, I began to wonder just what he and James were talking about, anyway. It occurred to me that I should have wondered that originally, but at that point in time I was still slightly disoriented from Sirius and I's tense moment that I didn't think of it. They were always acting so suspicious lately...

And before I could think any more of it, Sirius burst through the kitchen doors, looking far too gleeful. "Hey! Told you it'd take a minute, didn't I?"

"I wasn't counting, but I think that was more than a minute," I replied obstinately.

He shrugged it off. "Hey, weren't you supposed to take Lily out for lunch the other day? You know, before she got Imperiused and then you were attacked by that werewolf?"

I stared at him in bewilderment. "Yeah?"

"Well, you should give her a call. The Floo works marvelously, I've just tried it out now, I'd know." I was still giving him an incredulous look so he explained further, "I mean, you both nearly died, you know? And after I got done talking to James, I just thought that... you should really spend time with her before one of you dies!" He blurted the last part proudly, before sobering back down and realizing with a curious expression that perhaps that had not been the wisest choice of words. "Er. Sorry. But, really, you should go take a walk with her. In the park, you know, the one a few blocks away from Diagon Alley? It's a muggle park and everything, haven't got the greatest quantity of magical parks around London, you know, but it's really quite quaint and there are little food shops all around and I'm sure you'd love it if you just—"

"Sirius, shut up. What's going on?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it quickly. "But you just told me to shut up."

I groaned. "Shut up about the park and tell me what's going on."

He bit down on his lips thoughtfully for a moment before answering, "Well, I just thought it was little selfish of me to steal you away from your best friend, who you obviously don't spend enough time with."

"Are you serious?"

A smirk slowly spread across his face as my sentence painfully dawned on me. "Never more in my life."

I rolled my eyes. "You know I s- I really don't do that on purpose."

"You were going to say, 'You seriously don't do that on purpose,' and then you stopped yourself. I caught that." He winked. "Just admit it, you're obsessed with me."

"Shut up and explain how to do this damn Floo thing since you're obviously not taking me out to eat and I am starving."

Happily, with the strangest, most peculiar spring in his step, he gestured widely with his arm in the direction of the sitting room. "Right this way, milady."

. . . .

The world seemed strangely quiet that afternoon in the park with Lily. We'd found it, luckily, with the assistance of a rather kind old man, but he'd neglected to tell us that the place was absolutely deserted. I tried to see it all as something beautiful, but our footsteps echoed as we walked beneath the canopy of trees and I couldn't help but feel uneasy.

Lily, on the other hand, seemed completely at home. "I wonder where those shops are that the boys mentioned. Seems like hot chocolate weather, doesn't it?"

I muttered, "I'm wondering why they suggested this place at all."

"It's kind of nice," said Lily. "Though I think we've passed that tree already."

"How would you know? They all look the same."

"Oh, look! I haven't seen that before." She pointed towards a small wooden sign that looked like it was a town away. "Can you read it?" she asked.

I shook my head. The writing was in bold, white letters, but far off it seemed to just be one big blob of paint. "Let's get a closer look," I suggested.

We treaded closer and the blob of paint slowly came into focus: Lily. Beneath it, lying precariously on the grass was a single red tulip. While Lily knelt down to pick it up, it occurred to me to wonder why it wasn't a lily under the sign. But then I watched as Lily lifted the flower to her face, closed her eyes and inhaled its scent, and I realized, much more slowly than I should have, that the flower was meant for her.

And perhaps giving Lily a lily would just have been far too cliché.

She stood slowly, twirled the pretty flower in her hand. "What do you think this is for?"

I glanced beyond her, where the trail continued, and nodded in the direction of another sign. "I guess we'll find out."

This sign, we found, was not a name or a flower, but an arrow that pointed further down the trail and seemingly led to nothing. Maybe it was a trap. The Death Eaters probably weren't our biggest fans these days.

But Lily giggled and excitedly tugged on my hand, and the thought fell from my mind.

We followed about five arrows, climbed over logs and ducked under weird shrubs, and we had yet to find what we were looking for. "What if this doesn't lead anywhere?" I asked. "We're not even following an actual path anymore."

"Stop it with your pessimism. This is an adventure."

"Don't we have enough of those?"

She sighed and shot me a look, though still in considerably good spirits. "An adventure that doesn't lead to our potential deaths."

Well, she had a point. We didn't have enough of those. Right as she turned back around to continue on our little mini-journey, we came upon a new sign, one that read: For you.

I stared at it. "What's for you?"

But when I looked at her, she wasn't reading the sign. She was staring at a giant box wrapped in a bright red bow only a little farther away from us. "Is that a...?" She trailed off, eyes wide and curious, before she started towards it without regarding me at all.

"Okay then," I said, mystified. "Lily, wait up—"

But before I could get her to stop, something tugged on my wrist and I found myself stumbling behind a bush. A hand clamped down on my mouth before I could will a sound past my lips. Heart pounding furiously in my chest, I found myself face to face with my captor.

Sirius.

He lowered his hand from my face and put a finger to his lips. "Shhh." My gaze found Remus and Peter both similarly crouched behind the bush, shooting me sly grins. Sirius pointed back to Lily through a gap in the bush, who was still slowly approaching the large gift looking thing, now beginning to grow wary.

She glanced around, looking for me. "Gracie?"

"What's going on? What are you all doing here?" I hissed at Sirius.

He smiled. "You'll see. Just wait."

After a long moment, Lily turned back to the box and took a few steps around it, seeming to wonder if she should open it, and how she would. It's what I was wondering, at least. The box was taller than she was.

She fumbled with the ribbon, and then tried to peel at the wrapping paper. Nothing was getting the thing open, though. With little success, she tried lifting it up. She didn't get it very far off the ground. It seemed there wasn't a bottom to the package. And there was a foot.

She shrieked in fright and dropped it at once. Unfortunately, though, she dropped the box on the foot, and there was a groan of pain. It seemed as if the foot was connected to a person. What was going...?

"Oh, er... sorry!" Lily shouted, a blush rising to her cheeks. She swiveled her head about for sign of anyone, but the place was still perfectly deserted. Gripping her wand in her hand, she uttered, "Wingardium Leviosa."

What was underneath the package gave Lily another squeal, and even when Sirius threw his hand over my mouth again, it could hardly suppress my own.

It was James. On one knee.

I was flailing my hands so wildly that I hardly saw Lily's reaction, and it wasn't till Sirius restrained my excited thrashing about that I properly saw Lily with her hands over my mouth, shaking and laughing before James, who was grinning, proud but almost shy, a look I couldn't remember ever seeing on him.

"James! You're here, you..."

There was a look in his eyes suddenly that stayed with me for the rest of my life. The look then wasn't really nervous, but not entirely confident either; it was one more like awe, like on one knee he could see her like he'd never before, like everything he'd ever known her to be summed up to this one moment, like he couldn't imagine a world without her. He was happy, and his eyes said "I love you" better than words ever could.

"Lily," James said. "Marry me?"

She was nodding and I could hear her saying, "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," before she dropped to the ground and flung her arms around him.

Three loud cheers broke out beside me as Remus, Peter and Sirius rose out from behind the bush. I followed their lead and clapped and shouted for them, happy tears clouding my vision. Lily glanced back at us, blushing but also smiling, with a look towards me that said, I should have known. And then she turned back to James and kissed him full on the mouth, and the sound of cheering blocked out every other sound of the world.

Aaawww. I actually subconsciously put a parallel in James's proposal to Lily with Harry's proposal to Ginny, which I wrote about in a one shot a while back. James and Lily are my favorite fictional-but-very-real-to-me couple ever, end of story.

Thanks for reading, lovelies! I'll give you a cookie if you review. Chocolate chip? :D x