A/N: For Eternally Seventeen. (See? It's Jily! I hope you like! :D )
Pairing: James/Lily.
Prompts: bouquets and wreaths
Rating: T
Notes: This is slightly based on a missing character! AU prompt-not long enough for the actual challenge, but I had to run with it. Also AU in regards to other things like Shell Cottage etc.
When she walks into the room at Shell Cottage, she thinks she's been transported into a garden. Flowers clutter every available surface, filling the air with the most heady perfume Lily has ever experienced.
"What is this?" she exclaims, as her husband's arms sneak around her and twirl her in place, up against his chest. He smirks down at her, hazel eyes full of laughter.
"You said you wanted flowers, didn't you?" James says. Lily laughs and thumps his arm.
"I meant like a bouquet! Not a-a houseful!" she chides him, but she can't be truly angry with him. It's such a sweet gesture, especially on the heels of the hospital visit last week. She still doesn't know how to feel about the fact she can't have children, so she pushes it away instead, focusing on the flowers and the sea air wafting in through the opened window and the fact they've got this cottage to themselves for two glorious weeks.
It will take your mind off things, Molly Weasley told Lily with a sympathetic pat on her shoulder, and as Lily helps James bring in the rest of their luggage, now dumped unceremoniously in the parlour for the moment, she has to admit that the motherly redhead is right. It is like they have left everything behind, even the threat of Voldemort, looming ever closer.
After a refreshing dinner, James picks Lily up and carts her out the door, ignoring her shrieks of protest to dump her in the ocean waves. She splutters and shivers and as the sea spray plasters her brilliant red hair to her face, she thinks that this is the definition of happiness. They cavort in the shallows until the sun slips past the horizon, painting the sky above them in brilliant blues and purples, and then James carries Lily back inside, warming her with slow, sweet kisses that make her feel like she has turned to liquid fire.
Damn the world and damn the war and damn it all, Lily thinks later, cuddled close to James in the afterglow, her head resting on his shoulder as he dozes. I wish I could stay here forever.
But she knows that she can't, and so she sighs and snuggles closer to her husband in the dusk-shrouded silence. If she can't have forever, a moment is good enough.