Disclaimer: I really don't think any of this owns to me besides the words used to tell it. If you don't believe me, contact my lawyers.

So Far: Lily's father died and James has been comforting her.

Chapter 32

Or

Of Back to the Fifth

Death is meaningless.

In dramas, people like to try and prove that it isn't. They act on somebody's behalf after they died, to prove there was some worth and that it wasn't pointless.

Lily knew now: death is meaningless.

The first thing she did after her dad died was sleep. When she woke up, she went to the funeral, and afterwards, she went back to sleep. The next time she woke, she went to school.

The second thing she did after her dad died was eat. When she finished gorging herself, she ran to the beautiful bathroom connected to her beautiful private dorm and she threw it all up. For the next week, she barely touched food.

The third thing she did after her dad died was go back to class. She was like a machine, unsure in her role but doing what she was told anyway.

During this entire time, she hadn't ever, not once, sat down and thought. And so, when it was two weeks later and she was sick to death of doing, she relaxed on her bed, opened her diary and waited for the words to come. But -

There were no words to explain what it felt like to love somebody and lose them. There were no words for the constant ache she knew would never go away. There were no words – there were no words, and she knew, just then, that death was meaningless.

She closed her diary and went to sleep, but it wasn't long before James came knocking.

"Come in," she called, and he did. He was holding something in his hands, probably food from dinner. He tried so hard the past few days to get her to eat more than a few bites. She was no fool, she could tell she'd lost more weight than was healthy, but every time so far she'd listened to James' pleas and ate more than a couple bites it had all come back right up again. He didn't have to wait for her to say anything; he put whatever he'd picked for her on her desk, and turned to leave.

"No," she said quietly.

If death is meaningless, so is life.

James blinked, but didn't move.

"You can come sit next to me, if you want," she said. She hadn't let him do that so far, trying to get away from people, not closer (maybe that's why she'd been so cold recently, all of the time, constantly).

He did. "Is – " He choked on his own words, realizing, most likely, that what he was going to ask had a pretty obvious answer. He looked away, and started again: "What's going on?"

Lily suddenly found one of her curls extremely fascinating. "I just," she muttered. She shook her head. "I don't even know. I miss you, I guess."

"Me? Specifically? I'm here all the time." James laughed nervously, running his fingers through his hair.

"But I'm not."

James looked shocked, but Lily shrugged. "It's true, you know it is. I haven't been acting like myself. I've been… trying, but it's hard to reconnect. I don't know who –" She shook her head. "I don't know what to do right now."

"You're trying to heal," James said. He looked awkward, unsure. "Nobody's blaming you. I mean – I know people miss you, too. But they're not sure how to act. Sirius has been going crazy." In response to that, Lily smiled, and James matched it with a grin of his own. "I'm sure Marlene and Dorcas and Mary are the same. Peter keeps insisting that we shouldn't do anything, but I – " His smile changed, became shier, and he bowed his head, playing with a loose thread at the edge of his robes. "I can't really stand still. Especially not when I see someone I – when I see a friend feeling so much despair."

If death is meaningless, so is life.

"I get it." Lily reached for his hand, but he withdrew, not just from her but from the bed as well. "Thank – "

"I'm sorry," he said, ruffling his hair even further, and began pacing. "I keep thinking on what I would do if I were in your position. My parents are really, really old, you know."

"I – James, I think – I mean, is anything wrong with them?"

"No, no." He forced a laugh, stopped pacing, and looked back at her, his eyes full of something she couldn't quite analyze. "Look at me, ranting about myself when I'm trying to comfort you. I'm doing this all wrong."

Lily patted the space next to her on the bed, and hesitantly, he joined her. She, also hesitating, eventually reached out, and when she saw she was met with no resistance, pulled him close to her. He rested his head on her shoulder, and she whispered: "It's not okay. Nothing's okay. I am not happy." He tried to pull away, but she held on tighter. "I need to say this: I am not okay. But that doesn't mean I won't get better. It's just an assessment of right now. Life moves on. Life moves on, and death is meaningless."

At this, he did pull away. "Wait, what?"

"This is it," she said, reaching for his hand. This time, he did not resist, and she cupped it, holding it as though it were precious – the most precious thing in the world. "This is all we have. Later, we'll all be gone, so right now, there's no point to do anything but we still do and that – it's all so pointless. But I don't care, see? I don't care." She moved her other palm to his cheek, and he leaned in just the tiniest bit, his eyes fluttering shut. "I don't care," she whispered, leaning in.

If death is meaningless, so is life.

She could feel his breath, warm on her upper lip; she could hear him inhale sharply, suddenly; she could tell how his heartbeat quickened at her touch. It was intoxicating, it was right, it was time –

He pulled away, and took with him all the heat in the room. "What are you doing?" he cried, stumbling as he made his way off the bed. "What is wrong with you?"

Lily was stunned. "I just – I thought –"

"You were not thinking just then," he said, seething, already so far away from her, already at the door. "Because if you were, then you were playing with me, and I cannot accept that."

"I – " she tried, but there were no words.

James, having reached the door, breathed heavily, and brushed his robed, maybe attempting to look more presentable. "Good night, Evans," he said, and he wasn't looking at her.

"I'm sorry," she said, but he was already out the door.

It was a strange couple of weeks, after that. On the one hand, everything seemed to return to normal: Lily came out of her room and went about her day to day, talking to her friends again, getting caught up on her Head Girl duties. Within fourteen days, the Marauders pulled three different pranks: moving all the chairs in every classroom on the second floor to one single unused dungeon; filling the armor in the Great Hall with owl food, so they did not leave after delivering the morning mail and instead slowly filled the room; and last but not least, somehow caused every single pair of glasses to disappear for six hours including James' very own, nowhere to be found in the entire school, so that a portion of the students and teachers were going about their day to day lives effectively blind.

But on the other hand, between all the laughter and juvenile discomfort, came the odd realization that there was something different. It was normal, sure – but the normalcy the seventh year Gryffindors had returned to was an old one, that hadn't existed for over a year. It was the normalcy of two groups: the boys and the girls, two groups surrounding each other, coexisting, but never overlapping.

It was a powder keg; this way of living was no longer normal for the groups. They were used to intermingling, they were used to squabbling and discussing and just being one, one group, one Gryffindor year. Suddenly, they discovered how fragile it could be; how much it depended on their effort and willingness to talk and be together; how easy it was to not do any of those things, the squabbling and discussing and just being.

It was odd, to see Lily and Sirius, formerly best friends, sitting at opposite ends of the table; it was odd, to see Lily talk at class, with no visible reaction from James; it was odd, to see the lack of communication between all of them, the way they'd been so easy and now –

The worst part, of course, was that the rumor mill had no idea why this was happening.

Oh, they were theories galore, of course, but it was increasingly clear that none of them were true or even likely. It didn't stop the rumor mill from spreading – but all anybody knew was that something had happened.

It's one thing to speculate about what happened when it happened to a stranger. It was very different when what happened happened to your best friend, and she refuses to talk about it.

Lily, in all ways, was back to her social butterfly ways, but she simply wouldn't discuss what had happened with the Marauders, and Mary was extremely frustrated. She'd asked, again and again, why the Marauders had stopped talking to them, what was going on for fuck's sake, and again and again there was nothing.

Mary, who thrived on gossip, felt as though the world was ending. She wanted to know, and so she turned to a source she swore she'd never turn to again.

That is, of course, Sirius Black, her ex-regular-snog-and-worst-date-ever.

Sirius turned out to be a difficult man to find. He was, seemingly, constantly scheming somewhere with his friends, which would not do. Not for this conversation.

She finally pulled him aside after Potions one day. "C'mon, Black," she said. "I need to talk to you."

Sirius frowned but put up no excessive resistance. "What's this about, McDonald?" he asked dryly, letting himself be led through Hogwarts' many corridors to that very empty classroom which seemed to always be bare.

"What, hurrying to get back to your friends?" she asked, setting him down in one of the chairs. She sat on a desk beside him, dropping her books to her left. They hit the floor with a loud, echoing bang, and she saw Sirius flinch.

"Yeah," he said eventually. "That's essentially it. So, mind telling me why I'm here?"

Mary found a piece of torn parchment in her robes and began playing with it. "Mind telling me why nobody seems to be on speaking terms with Lily anymore?" she asked, not looking up. She knew exactly what she'd see. He was going to lie to her, and she just wanted –

"Please don't lie," she said. "I'm so sick of not knowing what I'm supposed to be doing."

Sirius told her, and Mary frowned.

"But didn't he want her to kiss him? He's been waiting for this practically since they met!"

"Not like that, McDonald," Sirius said. "You think this is some silly crush? Do you really think he wanted her to – to not actually want him?"

Mary thought of everything she knew about James. She thought about the king of the rumor mill, the supposed walking Quidditch-prodigy-slash-sex-god, hardly ever seen with any woman. She thought of the bit of knowledge she'd gained from being the friend of his friends. She thought about it, and she said: "No, he wouldn't. Doesn't explain you, though."

"Yes, it does," Sirius said. "Can I go now?"

"You won't get away that easy," Mary said. She stood and crossed her arms, as if blocking his path to the exit (despite the fact that he could very easily walk around him, which she chose to ignore. It was symbolic anyway). "Explain."

"When Meadowes hurt you and Lily, who was the most insulted?" asked Sirius.

"Marlene," said Mary, slowly understanding. "But – "

"But, what? Meadowes was being a fucking racist, and all three of you stopped talking to her for almost a year. Lily wasn't even in the same situation – she wasn't pressured by anybody; she chose this. Do you understand? She chose to hurt my best friend. This isn't some stupid vengeance thing. This is a principle. This is – I mean, she was a mess, and she needed somebody else to feel the way she did. And James happened to be there. That's why she did it to him. If I had been there – she would've said something just as hurtful. Disguised as some fucking gift. She probably wasn't even surprised I had stopped talking to her once he – " He stopped suddenly, seeming to have run out of words.

Mary waited a moment, to see if he had any more anger left. "Did it feel good to let it out? Because – " deep breath – "because I know I wish I'd said something for Dorcas, that day. But I didn't."

"I – "

"It's okay, Sirius," Mary said, "I get it if you choose to stay away from her for a while, or even not to talk to Lily ever again. But – there was once a time I thought it was all an act. That she didn't care about anybody, and that she only pretended to care for her own popularity's sake. After all, that's what I did. But the both of us know that it's not. It's never been. She's the most genuine person in Hogwarts, and she made a mistake out of grief. I mean – and I know this is a sore spot, but she's been betrayed by her best friend before, and I know she probably doesn't even think this is true, but she misses him. And then she had you, and that made it easier. And now she just has us again and – " She shook her head. "She misses you too. I can tell. None of us can just go back to fifth year again. It doesn't work like that. I'm not talking to Tally. Dorcas is out of the closet. Marlene had sex with James. And Lily – Lily's changed. We've all changed. Maybe it's just the natural progression of things, us no longer being fifteen, but to be honest – it's also because we became one big group, instead of two smaller ones. And it's going to be impossible to reverse that."

"Mary – "

"Just think about it," she said. "Just… think about it."

Sirius thought about it. Sirius thought of pretty much nothing else for the next two weeks. But still, he'd done nothing. Halloween wasn't all too far away, and the Marauders were preoccupied with plans for the after-party.

They were, in fact, walking in the second floor discussing it, when it happened.

It wasn't even all that abnormal. Snape showed up around the corner; there was nobody else in sight. Snape said something awful, James said something prideful, Remus whispered some new spell in Sirius' ear, but James beat him to the punch. Sirius couldn't remember, later, what it was that set James off, only that Snape was suddenly in the air, and behind him a familiar voice screamed, "No!"

The next few moments, however, Sirius remembered clearer than anything else in his life.

James, as pale as ghost; Remus, looking deeply ashamed; Peter, squeaking and hiding behind Sirius; Lily, crying out: "I can't believe I almost kissed you!" and running in the direction she came from; the disgust on Snape's face at that statement; the pointed look James gave him, the way Sirius could tell the moment he decided to give up.

Snape was dropped.

James walked away, in the opposite direction from Lily.

Sirius ran after Lily.

Sirius came back with Lily, both hugging and sobbing.

But they would be okay.

A/N: Oh boy. Looking back at this. Hm. It's been over a year since I wrote it, possibly more. It's alright, I guess. I remember struggling to write it because it was important to me that Lily make a mistake this big, but I didn't want to turn her into a character nobody could sympathize with. Hopefully I was successful? Please, please tell me I was successful. I love Lily so much, and I just killed her dad off, mostly because he had to be dead by the time Lily and James got married, and not really for any other reason. Now, I'm not even going to get them to get married - this fic ends sometime in February 1978, unless something goes horribly, horrible wrong - but we know that James' parents die basically of old age, while there's no real reason for Lily's parents to not be able to take Harry in. So... cancer. Yay!

I sat down to write the ending to the latest chapter, chapter 35, and I realized... it was finished. I don't know why I felt the need to drag it out for about a month too long. Which meant I could go back and publish chapter 32. Which is nice, but there's probably not going to be another chapter for a while. I'm working on a script! For a podcast! I'm doing camp nanowrimo, and I'm really excited for it. It's going to be a long while before my podcast is up in a way you can listen to it - for one, because the script isn't anywhere near done, and also, I want to have it done completely before I publish it, because if there's anything I've learned from this, you can definitely go through a long period of time where depression says: hey, dude. Guess what. That feeling of wanting to write? the next time you're going to feel it is in about 11 months. Good luck.

So yeah, fuck you, depression. I'm writing every day in July anyway.

As always, you can send me an ask at my tumblrs - either my mainblog, sheisawonder, or my sideblog, queerastronauts - and I read every single review you leave, so PLEASE, keep leaving them. Your support after my last update was... invaluable. Truly. I owe you all so much.

I love you.

JustGail