Flying through the rain; and cold, cold ever piercing her skin. There is something happy about it, though. Pushing the pedals ever harder and almost literally flying along the narrow, rain-soaked dirt lane and past the melancholy reds, yellows, and oranges of the autumn trees about her.
It is a beautiful scene.
Her hair matches the colors of the trees. The messy bun drips with steady water, and she can feel the hairband struggling to hold it in. Her hair has always been wild. She has always been wild; always the one to do those crazy things that people think about but never actually act upon. She is rather impulsive; known for it, actually. Every thought that comes into her head usually makes its way out of her mouth. The thought makes her grin.
Suddenly, she flies past a large mansion. An impulsive thought to explore makes her careen to a stop. She notes that out of one of the windows a face peers out – a face she knows. It is James Potter. Her mouth instantly curves into a silly smirk. Of course James Potter lives in a mansion.
He returns the smirk, and vanishes from the window. She gets off her bike and leans against it, tilting her face up to feel the cool rain on her skin.
"You're crazy, Evans!" Potter yells, appearing at his door.
"So I've been told!" She shouts, striving to make herself heard above the wind, a delighted smile adorning her face.
"You're trying to get pneumonia, right?" He asks.
"I never get sick!" Lily protests, rolling her bike closer to the porch. "At least not from this," she admits, making it to the safety of the porch roof, and leaving her bike carelessly on the soaking steps.
"Pretty careless way to leave your bike," James raises his eyebrows.
Lily doesn't even glance at it. "It's got an Impervius charm on it."
Lily takes her hair out of its bun and shakes it around like a wet dog, spraying water everywhere.
"Hey!" James yells, backing farther into his house. "That water's cold!"
"Live a little, James," Lily scolds. Her eyes stand out vividly in her pale face. There is in excited light in them, one that James has never seen directed at him before. Her hair is wet and messy. The water makes it look almost brown. And her clothes are absolutely soaked.
"You must be uncomfortable in those wet clothes," James says. (Thank Merlin her shirt isn't white!)
Lily glances down at them. "Now that I'm not getting more soaked every minute . . . kind of," she shrugs.
"Well, would you like to come in?" James asks awkwardly. Lily shakes her head. A mischievous light comes on in her eyes, one that James recognizes all too well – the countless times he's seen it in his friends . . .
"No," Lily says now, "you're going to live a little!"
"Hey, hey, hey," James backs away, alarmed, "I live!"
"Until you've done this you haven't lived," Lily says shortly, without a hint of amusement on her face. She takes his hand and drags him out into the wet.
"Okay, that's really cold! I don't care what you say, Evans, this is bloody freezing!" He tries to dig his heels into the ground, but she is striding along too quickly for him to gain purchase in the slippery grass.
Suddenly, the rain begins pouring harder. Now the raindrops are large and fat and he can feel every one as they hit his head. He is soaked within a minute.
Lily gives a shriek of excitement. "I love this!" He suddenly gets a glimpse of her face. Her eyes are gleaming in wild happiness, a stark, vivid green, her face paler than ever, and with the widest smile he's ever seen on her face, she looks like pure, unadulterated joy embodied in a human. Her hair is completely straight, weighted down by water; his bangs, also soaked, drip into his eyes, and he flicks them away impatiently: he wants to look at her forever; so wildly expressive, so unrestrained.
He registers her staring back at him, and he knows that she recognizes the look in his eyes.
But she just takes his other hand too and twirls around, and soon the smile is back on her face; and he is laughing, gazing at her like a man enraptured; and he doesn't look away from her face once. She looks everywhere: her gaze is on him, on the colorful trees, on the sky, back to him. She is not avoiding his gaze; she is simply enjoying everything at once. But she is his everything, so he doesn't look anywhere else.
Soon she cartwheels to the ground, laughter taking up her breath, looking like a small child who does not know the world can go wrong. He follows suit, balancing himself on his elbow so he can still look at her. She lies spread-eagled on the ground and closes her eyes. Her eyelashes are long and black in the rain; a water droplet balances on one of them.
They lie in companionable silence until her eyes flash open; then they are off again, dancing and laughing in the rain.
Unnoticed by them, James's mother stands in the shadows of the door, watching her son, her oh-so-grown-up son, in the company of the girl he loves. She sees him stare at her like she is the world itself, and smiles, enjoying the child-like innocence of love. It does them well to forget the impending war looming on all of them.
Then she shakes her head ruefully. Only the girl James loves can have made him leave the safety of his dry porch. James hates being wet and cold more than anything.
But he doesn't seem cold; he is caught up in the heat of his emotions. As she lies with her eyes closed and he allows himself to stare at her full on, she sees his face fully. The emotion in him startles even her. His eyes glow; she can see, plain as day, that since she is happy, he is happy too.
She shakes her head again. It's not only the war that's made her little boy grow up so fast. He looks at Lily Evans the same way she remembers looking at his father when she was sixteen. Love makes you realize things and make sacrifices that you would otherwise learn about only in old age.