She convulsed soundlessly on the bed; eyes squeezed tightly shut, body shaking up and down. She let out a shuddering breath, heaved inwards to get some much-needed air. She would let no one hear. Because Lily Evans was not weak. Lily Evans did not cry.
It was over in a heartbeat.
She sat up resolutely, reaching for her sketchbook; wild red hair, previously strewn haphazardly over her face, fell away to reveal startlingly emerald eyes. Right now those green eyes were rimmed with red, and shining with unshed tears.
More and more inspiration grew inside of her, and her tears dried and disappeared; she just let herself draw whatever the heart commanded.
Pencil flew over paper.
Soon the sketchbook fell to her lap; she sighed into space, the dreams inside of her unable to be contained. Him. She glanced at her sketch: sharp cheekbones, perpetually messy black hair, burning hazel eyes . . . he seemed alive as his drawn form stared out at her from the white.
XXXXX
One, two, three, four, five… The ball was hurled, with vicious, lightning accuracy, into the hoop; and then again, and again, and again.
Hazel eyes, burning black, cut through the gathering gloom.
The red ball cut the air in a wide arc. Again and again the ball was thrust into hoops, being thrown into an imaginary face: white skin, glowing red eyes, slits for nostrils.
For Lily Evans, the boy thought savagely. The ball slammed into the middle hoop.
Dark clouds gathered on the horizon.
For Mum, he thought again. The ball was flung into the right hoop.
Then his face was cut with cold air as if with knives; he realized tears were streaming down his cheeks. The Quaffle dropped soundlessly, slowly to the ground; the boy slumped over his broom. It went wayward. James didn't bother to control the broom.
What was the point? The Dark side was too strong; they would all die eventually. The rain came pouring down. The boy fell from his broom, just as a crack of lightning illuminated the sky…
XXXXX
She shrieks as a dark shape suddenly detaches itself from the air and begins falling, falling down towards the ground. She finds herself whipping out her wand and crying, "Aresto Momentum!" Even as it happens, she begins crumpling to the ground too, the tears suddenly impossible to withhold. They blind her vision, yet she still tries to struggle up as soon as she falls . . . James can't die!
She finds herself tearing down a stone hallway. Screams follow her; she ignores them.
Then she is outside; a torrent of rain adds to her salty tears. Thunder seems to rattle the earth's very foundations. They are deafening to Lily's ears….she stumbles off her course. Arms out, dripping with water; and her eyes are still dripping water too.
She begins thinking that she comes too late. Even if – somehow, impossibly, - her spell reached James, how could one survive in this storm, after hurling through the air 50 feet? Shaking her head, trying to get rid of the doubt, the tears, the inevitable grief . . . she's suddenly wetter than she was.
She can't breathe . . . what is that awful silence?
Suddenly, she can't hear the storm anymore, but she is still being thrown around . . . by the buffeting waves of the Black Lake, she realizes. She can't hear because the water is pressing on her ears; her breathing is obscured by the water now pressing on her lungs . . . her soaked clothing is dragging her down, towards the bottom, towards the end.
She can't save James now. She realizes that, however slowly, she is dying . . . Hair flowing slowly around her face, she realizes that she has sunk unbelievably deep in the lake, so low that the storm can't trouble the water anymore.
She can still move . . . but it's all becoming hazy, as if in a dream . . . slowly her eyes close; hands, legs give up struggling; and she sees what she supposes is her last waking thought: James. His beautiful eyes . . . how beautifully they burn when they're angry. She supposes he would be angry now.
She coughs. She splutters. She kicks wildly. She opens her eyes. With a sudden intake of breath, - air! - she realizes that it wasn't her last waking thought of James. There he is! In front of her . . . how strange. Wasn't he dead? Wasn't she dead?
She registers shouting.
"Are you bloody crazy, Lily? Are you insane? You could have died! Blundering out after me in this storm! It's no wonder you were thrown into the Black Lake! It's a bloody hurricane out here! You're crazy! Insane! You're . . . you saved my life." He finishes in defeat.
"And I saved yours," he adds as an afterthought.
She finds the strength to pick her arms up. She puts them around his neck. She pulls him closer and kisses him.
"I was afraid you'd died," she whispers.
Then she kisses him.
"I was afraid you'd died," he whispers back.
And they kiss again.
A/N: I know the last part is in a different tense. It's on purpose.