Lily felt paralyzed for a moment. Her mind raced, and the most prevalent thought was a loud shouting voice that told her to get out of the flat. Her legs didn't quite get the message though, because she was rooted to the spot. She first nervously looked over her surroundings and noticed the detail with which James had created the perfect intimate date atmosphere. Once she looked at him, though, she found herself unable to look away.

He looked almost painfully handsome to her; she was a sucker for dressed up men. The look on his face meant more though, and it made her even more nervous. His expression was a mixture of multiple feelings. She saw the excitement in his wide smile, and it wobbled just a tiny bit at the corner to betray his nervousness. She read his confidence as his hazel eyes carefully locked on hers, almost daring her to break away.

Lily couldn't begin to guess what her own face looked like. She felt a melting pot of emotions that could rival James's. She was thrilled and excited. She loved the anticipation and the sense of pseudo-danger that rushed through her. She was worried because she knew how the evening would most likely end up. She had never been strong enough to resist the full force of his charm. She was terribly frightened. Lily did not want to feel this. She didn't want to be attached to anyone like James again. She didn't want this.

Lily inhaled deeply, and she made the slightest movement in preparation to bolt for the door.

"Don't do it, Lily."

She gulped. "James, what are you trying to do now?"

"If it isn't obvious, I fouled up something terrible." James closed the distance between them until he was just centimeters from her. He leaned down so he could whisper in her ear, "I'm going to seduce you."

"I won't let you," Lily said stubbornly. This wasn't going to work. Again, she nearly began her trip to the door, and again, James stopped her by speaking.

"Will you always walk out the door and leave me in broken pieces? Will you leave again and take away the most vital part of me? Will you always run and keep a part of yourself empty and indifferent?"

"Perhaps."

His mouth quirked up into a slight smile and he lightly cupped her face in one hand. She had not expected that response. "I used to feel the same way. You pulled me out of my pit of despair; it's only fair I reciprocate."

"There's no reason."

"There's every reason."

They had been so close while they were speaking that he had only to angle his face slightly to kiss her. Lily felt a disoriented moment, and then it was almost like she was reliving a memory or falling into a dream. The light pressure of his lips against hers was undemanding filled with love. It felt like it had been a lifetime since she had been kissed in this way, without hate or malice or an undoubtedly painful encore. Lily was sure she stopped thinking. James kept the one hand on her face and the other barely resting on her shoulder. He didn't falter as he turned her so her back was no longer against the door and she could easily step away.

When she saw this, it was Lily who deepened the kiss. She pressed him against the door with a force that rattled the hinges, and for a scary moment, James feared he would tumble straight into the hallway. Luckily, the door held, and Lily didn't even seem to notice. Her hands left their resting place on his chest and began roaming down his arms, up his sides, down to the point where his shirt was tucked into his trousers, and up his arms again in a reverse motion. For a moment, Lily forgot everything except for the present second with James. She felt the distant comfort of the memories of their life together, but horrors of the past years were nowhere to be found in her mind. Even the day's earlier events were blocked as she assaulted him. All she could think about was absorbing every ounce of kindness and love he was willing to give her through that kiss.

When that particular thought finally battered itself into her mind, she instantly stopped kissing him. James cautiously dropped his hands to her waist and didn't move. She was breathing heavily, her eyes still closed. Suddenly, she glanced up into his eyes, and she put a hand over her mouth. James felt her breathe even more deeply as she closed her eyes, looked up at him, and then averted her gaze to his shoulder. By this time she was shaking and he could tell she was on the edge of crying.

"What have I become?" Lily asked. She felt disgusted with herself. At this moment, she really hated the person Lily Evans had become. She had never felt so ashamed of herself. She was reviled by herself. She wasn't fit to be around good people. Lily looked around the room as if she could find the answer to her life. "I shouldn't have done that to you, James. I'm so sorry. I just felt like I could-."

"Soak up every drop of love and beauty to make the darkness go away?"

Lily glanced at him with even more horror. How had he known?

"I've done it to you a hundred times, trying to find something good and beautiful to make me feel better. You deserve to do the same to me." James pulled her too him and pressed her face against his shoulder. "I know it hurts so bad to realize you aren't what you once were. When you feel kindness or happiness, or most unbelievable of all, love, directed at you, you just want to take it all and store it for when you feel hate and sadness."

Lily felt the tears well up in her eyes, because that was exactly how she felt. She had never considered that James had felt the exact same as her at one point. "How do you make it go away?"

"Realize that this isn't you. Feel the love given freely and unconditionally to you. Remember the real you. Return the love."

"That's easier said than done."

"I have no doubt you can do it."

"I don't know if I want to."

James gently pushed her away from him and shook his head slightly. "Let's eat. Sirius cooked, so it'll be good."

"Give me a minute." While she went to the bathroom the erase her emotional outburst, James put the hot food on their plates and patiently waited for her. He would make this work. He had to.

When she came back into the room, Lily sat down without saying anything, and wordlessly placed her napkin in her lap. They were both cutting their chicken when she said quietly, "I was petrified in a field, behind some bushes. In all likelihood, it wasn't even a death eater who hit me. I lay there for a long time before the surviving Ministry personnel disapparated to gather reinforcements and medics. During that time, Voldemort's people went through and kidnapped some and killed others who were like me, and couldn't disapparate. It was raining, and I was so cold and dirty. I really hate being dirty. I was glad someone had finally come to retrieve me, until I saw that they didn't wear the Ministry's uniform." James paused with the cutting and stared at her. He couldn't believe she finally going to tell him this. "I was taken by a portkey to some sort of compound. I doubt I ever saw all of it during my time there it was so large. The part I was initially in was just a stone floor and wet walls. I wasn't hurt at all at that point, so I thought everything was going fairly smoothly, because surely I would be rescued directly. Perhaps I could be traded or something. If nothing else, I had every faith that you would blast the walls apart yourself. Anyway, I was in there for a long time, and I was feeling pretty good about my situation. It was probably the next day before someone even walked by. Sometime they sent me some water, but that was it. Being hungry wasn't so bad, really. The first day was pretty bad, but after that you sort of just get used to it, except I was worried about our baby. I kept remembering all the textbooks you kept quoting about proper nutrition for the two of us, and I could just imagine you glowering at me with disapproval."

James was going to interrupt and say he couldn't really disapprove of anything in her situation, but her expression suddenly changed. She took on a scared, horrified look. "Do you want to go in the living room and sit down?"

"Not yet. It will be easier to say talk about this next part here." Lily gripped her utensils tightly, and she stared in the direction of the stove, but it was obvious she wasn't seeing anything in that flat. "It was almost a week before I saw any of Voldemort's people. Two really big wizards took me out, and down a hallway to another room like the one before. There were several men in there, sitting in a row behind a table, and there was just one chair out in the middle for me. They started asking me questions, and at first it wasn't bad. I guess I was still in my delusion that these people weren't that bad; that they were just trying to get ahead and they wouldn't really hurt me. They started out with just some normal questions about me and my life. Then, they started asking me questions about the Ministry and things going on there. I wasn't privy to top secret information, so I didn't have the answers to most of the questions, and they didn't care for that. They really thought I knew things, and they used curses on me for awhile, but then they actually started hitting me. I had never actually been hit before, James."

James put his hands over his face and wondered how much longer this story would last. He hated thinking about Lily being hit and cursed. He hated thinking about her expecting him to rescue her.

"It was when that was finally over that I lost the baby. That was the worst part of all. I hurt anyway, and that hurt so much worse. I couldn't imagine the baby living, it was only four months. I was scared to give birth anyway, and I was by myself. I was so heartbroken when it died. She actually looked like a little baby. It made me lose a lot of confidence and hope that I would get out okay. A healer actually came in later that day, and I woke up at some point in the future. I was entirely well, and for a moment I had forgotten everything. I was left alone for a long time again, and I was left to think with myself. I sort of came back to the thought that maybe things wouldn't be so bad again. Then, I was taken back into a room for questioning, beaten, healed, left alone for a couple days, and then it started over again. After about a month, the routine was changed a bit. After the questioning and before the beatings, they would…I was…they raped me."

"That sort of put things in perspective for me. I wasn't so sure things were going to work out okay after that, and that's when I started changing to the new Lily. You know how when you hear about spy stories and thing, you think you would be able to keep your secrets?" James nodded. "If I had known anything at that point, I would have told them."

They sat in silence for awhile. James stared blankly as Lily had been earlier, and she pushed the food around on her plate.

"A couple months into the process, they stopped questioning me, and gave me Celeste to take care of. By that time, she was about 8 months old, so she wasn't a tiny baby anymore. It was easy for me to grow attached to her. She was the only thing I had that wasn't inside my head. My imagination was beginning to bore me. There was one point that I swear I nearly lost my mind. After I had Celeste for awhile, the beatings stopped too, and I was on my trip to, you know, and I heard someone say the date. It was December fifteenth. I hadn't really a grip on time before that, and all of a sudden I came so aware of how long I had been there. All I could think about was what I should have been doing. I kept thinking about how you would never get the lights up on your own, and somebody was going to have to make sure Remus wasn't too depressed on the holiday. You and I should've had our baby, and everything would've been so wonderful. I just sort of became trapped in my own little world. I saw them take the Prewett twins' bodies by, and I finally snapped out of it. I began formulating a plan for escape. I usually wasn't guarded very carefully in the night, so I thought maybe I could slip out. I would hit a few guards on the head with a bowl, and that'd be that. I tied Celeste to my back under my robes and went for it. She started crying, and I got caught. That was the first time I was taken to Voldemort. That was the-."

Lily sat quietly for a moment, and for the first time she wiped her eyes. "After that I tried escaping two more times, and I left Celeste behind after that. I tried thrice, and I didn't have it in me to try it a fourth." With resignation, she pushed her plate away, and without looking at him, she muttered, "If you want to leave now, I understand."

James, too, was silent for a bit before he picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles. "I live here, what are you talking about?"

"But, I, you, we, I-."

"You stuck by me when I thought I had a terrible event in my past, and now it's my turn to stick with you. I love you, and I won't be easily deterred."

Lily knew she would cry if she looked at him, so she tried staring at the candle in the middle of the table. He ducked his head to catch her eye, and then she couldn't help but glance up in his face. It was just like being hurt when she was little. She wouldn't cry until she saw her mum, and there was just something in her mother's face and the tender note of love in her voice and the acceptance in her embrace that made the tears fall. James had that same quality in him that made her feel like he could take care of everything if she just unloaded everything on him.

James lifted her from her chair to his lap, and without further invitation she ducked her head against his shoulder and started crying. It was such a relief to be able to cry, knowing he knew part of what happened, and knowing she was safe and she didn't have to worry about being hurt, and she was with someone who stilled love her, amazingly despite what happened. Despite the fact that she was crying like her heart was broken, she felt just the tiniest bit of hope and happiness burgeoning inside of her.

Lily sighed when her alarm clock went off the next morning. The work thing wasn't such a novelty when she actually had to get out of bed.

"What's the alarm for? I don't work on Fridays," James said groggily.

Lily froze; she had forgotten James had slept in her bed with her last night. The night before, they had reheated Sirius's meal, and they had both fallen asleep on the living room floor. When he suggested they sleep in the same room, she hadn't seen the problem since he assured her sleeping was the only thing on his mind. Besides, it wasn't the sleeping that held the bad memories for her. During the nearly three years of captivity, nobody had simply slept in the same bed with her, or sleepily draped an arm over her waist, or rested their head against the base of her neck to listen to her heart beat. James was the only person those activities were associated with. Even now, she didn't mind, but she knew sleeping wouldn't be the only thing on his mind for long. "I do."

"What?" James reached over her to turn the alarm off.

"I told you I was going to get a job yesterday when I left the house. You thought I was just throwing a fit, didn't you?"

"Well, yes. Why would you want a job?"

"Why does most of the world work?" Lily snapped. She threw her side of the blankets over his head and got out of bed. While she was pawing through her closet, he sat up and started talking again.

"They need money. We don't need money. I have a good job, and my parents left me everything they had. More importantly, are you sure you're ready to work again? Besides, what kind of job could you actually get so quickly?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

"Lily, come on."

"You'll do something to sabotage me; I know you will." Lily crossed her arms imperiously and glared at him.

"You're crumpling your robes," James pointed out. She sneered and stomped off to the bathroom. He laughed. All they needed was Sirius poking around first thing in the morning and things would be back to normal.

When she Lily left the bathroom, she found James dressed and patiently waiting at the table, reading the newspaper. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting on you to get here so we can eat breakfast."

"Where's it at?" she asked suspiciously.

"At the café, I suspect. I thought we could go out and eat together before your first full day of work. You have time, don't you?"

"Yeah, I don't have to be there until half eight. I was planning on going myself."

"I trust you won't mind some company. Shall we?" James opened the door for her, and seeing no easy way out, she went. After all, she was planning on going out anyway, so why not eat with him? Because it's what we used to do every Friday morning. He took her hand as they walked down the corridor, and that completed the picture. Apparently James thought the same thing. "Isn't this just perfect? We used to eat breakfast together every Friday morning."

"It's wonderful."

"Except for I'm supposed to be the grumpy, non-morning person. Maybe we should change it to another morning since I don't work on Fridays anymore. Wednesday would be good. It would give us something to look forward to on an otherwise dull day. Wednesday is pretty overlooked, you know."

"Am I supposed to be looking forward to this?" Lily muttered.

"Of course you are, Lily dear," James said with a laugh, and tugged playfully on a lock of her hair.

"Were you drinking while I was in the shower?"

"No, I was not. I was revising my plan on best how to woo you."

"Oh my God."

"You'll be saying that once I-oomph." They were both laughing as she shoved him outside into the early morning fog. James continued to taunt her, putting her into a very good mood, until they got to the small restaurant that was thriving with the early morning coffee-drinking gossiping men. When the bell overhead tinkled, they all turned to see who had just walked into this sacred, caffeine guzzling world. A few nodded at Lily, and they all turned back to their own conversations and drinks. "This is perfect, huh?"

"If you're eighty and you have a beard and a funny looking hat."

"You're killing me, Lily." They sat at a vinyl-covered booth, and began flipping through the plastic menus already on the table.

Soon, a middle-aged woman ambled over, and Lily immediately noticed she was pursing her lips constantly. "Hey James, it's not Wednesday."

"Hi, Madge. Lily, this is Madge. Madge, this is Lily, my wife."

"Congratulations, I didn't know you were getting married. Nice to meet you, Lily. I've heard a thousand things about you, but I never figured he would get you to marry him. Will you be having your usual, James?"

"Yes, with a side order of bacon."

"Lily?'

"Waffles with coffee, please." As soon as Madge wandered off, Lily hiked an eyebrow at James. "Care to explain that to me?"

"She acts sorta weird because she's started taking these diet pills. Her thirty year reunion is in two months, and she wants to get down to a size eight."

"How did she not know you were married?"

"She just assumed I wasn't. I always come here by myself, and I never said anything about Penelope."

"Why'd she know me?"

"I might've mentioned your name a couple times," he said defensively.

Lily smiled. This was cute. "So, this Friday breakfast must really be throwing you off course."

"Not if we eat on Wednesday next week."

"What a lunatic," she laughed.

Lily was stretching just as the door squeaked, alerting the two secretaries that someone had just entered. She spun her chair about, and was faced with a little kid carrying a small bouquet of daisies.

"These are for Ms. Potter."

Lily raised one hand meekly, and the little boy walked over and gave her the flowers. She went to give him some money, but he waved her off.

"I've already been paid. See ya." He scampered off, and Lily glanced up to see Henry looking at her accusingly. Lily took out the card and instantly recognized James's handwriting. Lily, Have a great first day, Love James…p.s. Cooking lessons tonight. She laughed. What a sneak. A sweet sneak. "What a dork," she said out loud, and sat the daisies on her desk. He had accurately pegged the daisy as the perfect flower for her the first time he gave her flowers years ago, and she still loved them. Daisies were vastly neglected in her opinion. They were so cheerful, and when they were dyed, they were quirky and fun. These were just plain, white daisies that he probably snagged off a vendor's cart, but she still liked them. What woman didn't like getting just because flowers?

"That didn't take long. Daisies are a pitiful morning after flower, though," Henry said spitefully.

"What are you talking about?" Lily asked brightly. She was still happy about the flowers.

"Normally, men send roses after they shag their secretaries. You know, it's supposed to make the women thing they're loved, and it eases the man's conscience, so all parties are happy. At least roses cost a couple galleons. Those could probably be bought with a silver."

"Henrietta, I didn't sleep with Mr. Cartwright last night, and I really don't have intention to." Lily smiled and gave the flowers a wave to catch Henry's attention. "My husband sent me these."

"You're married, and you're carrying on with the boss? I cannot believe you."

"I am not carrying on with the boss. Apparently Mr. Cartwright doesn't know I'm married, but I in know way encouraged him."

"You didn't mention being married."

"I didn't see it was any of your business."

"Where's your ring? A fancy girl like you would have to have a ring."

Lily looked down and saw she wasn't wearing her rings. In a rush she remembered taking them off yesterday when she was furious with James. And then she had put it in her pocket, which meant it was still in her robes, lying on the bedroom floor. Hopefully, James would decide to be domestic on his day off and pick it up. Then again, in nearly three years of living together, he hadn't ever picked up his clothes, let alone hers. "I got in a fight with James yesterday, and I took them off. I just forgot to put them on again."

Henry looked at Lily disdainfully, "What did you two get in a fight about? Which one of you would have to give the House-Elf orders today?"

"We don't have a House-Elf, Henry. We manage quite proficiently on our own."

Henry made an unintelligible noise, and they both turned back to their work.

Lily was impatiently watching the minute hand on the clock turn around, waiting on it to hit the twelve so she could go home. This job wasn't as fun as she was expecting. Henrietta was like some sort of crazed Slytherin that never made it to Hogwarts. However, she only had twenty seconds until four o'clock, and she could race out of here…to cooking lessons.

She swiveled in her chair at the sound of feet coming down the stairs. Fifteen seconds. She had a bad feeling about this. Aidan Cartwright came down the stairs with a smile on his face, and made his way over to Lily. She was hoping he would stop at Henry's desk, and she could make her escape. Unfortunately, that didn't work out, and he came straight to her own little area, and rested his hip against her desk. Lily glance toward the door as Aidan began to speak. In slow motion, she saw the door knob turn and the door was eased open. In shock, she saw James walk in with a bright grin on his face and a book under his arm.

James quickly spotted her and Aidan, and he cocked an eyebrow inquiringly. She didn't know what any of them were going to do next.