Seven Things
2/7. She's never seen the stars before.
No, that doesn't make sense.
She's never imagined the stars before.
That... doesn't make sense either.
She sighs, discards this confusing introspection. She leans back on her arms and stares up at the clear skies. The school gardens are devoid of any other presence besides herself. It should creep her out, really, hanging out here alone in the dark. But there's nothing. Just... the stars.
Her number's over, but the programme isn't yet, and she can feel the bass of the music from the quadrangle. Deafening over there, just a faint thrum worrying the grass here.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and thinks, the before and after are always the worst. But she amends this at once, because there can't be a worst part without the bad then the worse. And singing's not bad. It's never been.
The before and the after are always just the bad parts, she concludes.
The before is this: her heart beating so fast and so hard and the beat of the intro sweeping the ground off her feet. Always. Like the lyrics are smashing repeatedly against her throat, word for word, taunting her to throw them up, lose them all before she's even started. It's trembling knees and clammy fingers around the mic and trying to remember how to breathe to sing, how to breathe to stay upright.
And then she opens her mouth and it's... It's another world. It's lights and flying and unnamed smiles and her hands moving on their own, it's closing her eyes and trusting herself to hit the right notes at the right time. Mary always tells her she's a different person when she sings. Maybe she is.
The after, meanwhile, is all... pins and needles. Stars. All over. A restless, addictive thrill that settles on her skin and takes some time to run out. She tugs at her last train of thought: She's never imagined these stars. She's never tried to put a definite depiction to it, to this. The after. But when she opens her eyes and the exiguous slice of the galaxies greet her up above... There. That's what it must look like. It's moving after staying still for too long, not knowing you've stayed still for too long. The nerves catch up. The euphoria tingles. That's not bad in itself, unlike the before. It's the fact that she still feels like this after all this time that bothers her. It's that she takes this long to wind down from that high still, despite the countless times she's done this over the last four years. She's worried it might never go away.
"You're not crying, are you?"
She swears, nearly jumps out of her skin.
He's leaning against one of the columns enclosing the gardens, his tuxedo coat slung on one shoulder, his sleeves rolled up. God knows where his tie's gone. Ties never seem to have a lasting relationship with him.
She considers replying with something along the lines of, "What the hell are you doing here?" or, "What do you want?", but opts to look back up at the skies and stay silent. No hopes for him to walk away, though. Ignoring him has never worked.
Sure enough, in no time he's slumping down beside her on the grass, mimicking her position.
"Strange place and time to be star gazing," says James.
"No one invited you here," says Lily.
"When will you stop being angry with me?"
"I'm not."
"You are. And if I didn't know better, I'd say you're..." But he doesn't finish.
"What?"
He ducks his head and peers up at her. Looking her squarely in the eye, he says, "Jealous."
"What?"
"Are you?"
Immediately: "No."
"That sounded like a question," he challenges.
"Only because it's incredulous. It was incredulity. It's, 'No?' as in, 'Hello? You're delusional?'"
He laughs and leans away. "Alright, alright. Sorry."
"Why are you here?"
"Can't I be?"
"Hmm. Where's your usual posse?"
"Peter mucked up his number."
Lily's been with him and the others for long enough by now to accept that as an explanation. She knows what that feels like. She knows what happens to Peter when that happens. "Oh, no," she says, feeling genuinely sorry.
"Yeah." He lies down on the grass, folding his arms behind his head. "And I was fantastic, so he said he couldn't be around me right now."
She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I bet you were." She meant it to be derisive, but she knows he was. He rarely isn't. "The others then?"
"Comforting him, of course. They're in the piano room."
She nods noncommittally.
"What about you?" he asks.
"Well, I reckon I was fantastic, too."
He chuckles. "That, you were, Evans," he says, notably not derisively. "But I meant what are you doing here?"
She decides on the easiest truth: "Winding down."
"Ah," he says simply. "I know what that feels like."
"Do you?"
He pauses. "On second thought, I'm not sure."
"Figures."
Silence.
"Lily."
"Hm?"
"I'm sorry," he says, quiet but firm. He's still on his back, and she's still sat and looking up, so she doesn't see his expression.
"For what?"
"For summer. For... for kissing you."
There's a lump in her throat. She feels like swallowing it would mean defeat for some reason, so she ignores it. "You sure you got the girl right?" she asks. "If I remember correctly—and trust me, I am remembering this correctly—we didn't kiss."
"Well, I... You know. Almost then. I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." The sentence trails off.
Of course. Of course. Of course he's sorry, of course he didn't mean it. He had—has—a girlfriend, and besides Lily's hated him, hasn't she, she's been on the other side of his arguments for so long. She's always had her world parallel to his, so that even when they had their differences reconciled, even after the past year when they've become unexpectedly close, they'd never meet. They're always parallel. Distant, then close, but never crossing.
What a grossly schmaltzy thing. And acknowledgment of the gross schmaltziness doesn't even make her feel any less wretched.
"It's okay," she tells him. "I should have known, really."
He stirs. "That I was going to kiss you?"
"That you were going to be a git."
"Oh. Right."
"I'm not going to tell Jeanne, don't worry."
He sits up. Slowly, and with a deep sigh. "You don't need to. I just did."
So it appears that James Potter's full of surprises tonight. "Oh?"
"Yep," he says, nodding, popping his P.
A number of things cross Lily's mind at this. She settles for, "And how did that go?"
"She hates me."
"You mean she hates me," says Lily.
"Probably, but... Nah. No, I don't think so. There's no way you'd... She would know it's all me. I mean, I've... It's you. And me. Of course it'd have been all me."
"You're not making any sense."
He smiles. It's the humorless kind, directed at nothing. "There's no way you'd have wanted it to happen, 's what I mean. And she knows that."
Lily thinks, quite intensely that she's amazed he can't sense it off her, It wasn't all you. She says, "She probably hates me all the same."
"I'm sorry."
Lily shrugs. "Are you... Did you break up then? Is that why you're here? Bit insensitive to be with me after all that, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I don't know. It was either you or Sirius, and he's preoccupied at the moment. I thought I might go mad."
"You're already irredeemably mad, James."
He laughs. After a while, he says, "We didn't break up, no. I'm not sure what happened, really. She's angry, but she said... I don't know. Whatever. I'll deal with it in the morning."
Lily just nods. She doesn't ask any more. She doesn't think about it. She has no business to.
"Are you... er, wound down?" he asks her.
She considers this. "I don't know."
He checks his watch. The numbers and hands glow a faint blue-green in the dark. "They'll be at Chuckskate's now. You wanna come with?"
Before she can answer, a loud hiss shoots in the surrounding silence, and it's only now that Lily realizes the vibrating distant bass has died down. They both jump, Lily's heart skipping a beat in shock. But then the skies light up with the first round of fireworks, and she and James get on their feet to watch it, her delicate, awestruck smile mirrored on his face.
"Happy Foundation Day, Hogwarts," he mumbles, grinning at her, one hand slinging his coat back on his shoulder and the other disappearing into his pocket.
She grins back.
Stars. Fireworks. Pins and needles. Her heart beating so fast, and so hard, and the ground being swept away from beneath her feet.
Being with James is a lot like singing, she thinks.
And as she leaves the gardens with him to meet the boys at Chuckskate's—feeling happy, feeling guilty, feeling like stars are dying and being born and exploding in and on and around her—she realizes the difference is that being with James is somehow before and during and after all at once.
And that—this—is the second thing.
AN: This one's for Ara Catin, RememberMe27, Dier Zhang, and every single one of you who favorited/followed. Hello and thank you for the reviews! I didn't expect anyone to make a comment on it, as I thought it didn't make much sense (or displayed any sort of merit), but thank you thank you. I didn't know where this was going too, honestly. I do know that there will be seven short chapters, that they will all be brief, and quiet, and fleeting. But unlike my other stories, this has a brand of spontaneity that's rather new even to me. But I hope it works, and I hope you find it worth reading. x
—Jayne