Get to know your parents;
It is a cold February morning. It has been an unusually chilly winter and the castle never really seems warm. A sixteen year old Lily had thoughts of creeping down to the Common Room to try and get the feeling back in her toes but she has stopped on the second bottom stair from her dormitory; still too far away from the fire to feel any benefit. She finds herself rooted to the spot and she doesn't why but she has been watching him for at least 6 minutes now. She is silent and he doesn't seem to have noticed her presence.
She watches with curiosity as his stiff fingers fumble with the silk wrapped around his neck. The colour is stark on him and she wonders when she has ever seen him wear anything black that wasn't school trousers or his outer cloak.
There is something heartbreaking about James Potter being all in black.
She is still silent as he wrenches the tie from around his neck and sinks to the sofa with his head resting in his hands. The light from the fire dances across the back of his head and she studies the tense muscles across the back of his neck. James Potter has been visibly tense for weeks and everyone has noticed. Even Lily Evans.
Something, some unknown force, causes her to move and she is crossing the Common Room before she even has time to think about what she is doing.
He glances up at the sound of her footsteps and blanches when he makes eye contact with her. She purposefully keeps her face blank and plucks the discarded tie from the floor. She runs the material through her fingers once and avoids his questioning stare. She knows that he is tired – exhausted really – and this interaction is not normal.
She has avoided him since the end of their fifth year and he, thankfully, has spoken to her very rarely. There is a heaviness in their interactions that wasn't previously there and Lily almost finds herself wishing for their petty, silly squabbles that they engaged in when they were younger teenagers. She longs for the screaming matches of their second year or the sarcastic snipes of their fourth year. Anything but this uncomfortable, heavy silence of unspoken apologies and unacknowledged forgiveness.
More than this, Lily almost wishes that James were the same old prattish boy he had always been and not this shell of a man he has become in the last 7 months. He has grown up too fast and she has been dragged along with him.
She has always been his peer and it is no different now.
His heavy, exhaled breath snaps her back to the present and she takes a seat on the coffee table in front of him, her fingers still delicately cradling the expensive silk.
His only sign of surprise is a slightly raised eyebrow.
Even this lack of response pulls at her.
"It's very easy once you know how to do it." Her voice breaks the silence and she is frowning at the tie in her hands, avoiding his dark, penetrating gaze. Without thinking, she is wrapping the silk around the back of her neck, the tie dangling limply down her front.
"Evans-"
"It just takes practice, you know?" She interrupts him as though he had never spoken. Her voice is calm and the moment feels surreal. Her hands perform instinctively, tugging the tie into a knot and slowly working the silk into a loose Windsor knot. The action is slow, methodical, practiced. "I don't know if this is what you were after but I always think the Windsor knot looks nice. It's a bit trickier than some of the others but it always looks a bit...fuller I guess." Her voice is quiet and the crackling of the fire almost drowns her out.
When she has finished, the tie is knotted and hangs loosely around her neck. She flicks the end of the tie and notes absently that her fingernail polish is chipping.
"Listen, James, I- I know what it's like. It sucks and it hurts – it hurts all the time and no one understands until they understand. And I wish, more than anything, that you didn't have to. And I'm sorry that you do."
Lily fiddles absently with the tie – suddenly shy, almost embarrassed - and she wishes she had the courage to say more, do more. But this is really the best she has and it's a hell of a lot more than she got when her Mum passed away and she was officially orphaned.
"He always tried to teach me to tie a tie."
James' voice is hoarse and it grates through the silence. Lily's fingers still and she silently urges him to continue.
"He always tried and I – I couldn't be bothered actually." His bark of laughter is harsh and cynical. It is not James Potter's laugh. "I found a charm in third year that would tie my school tie in a vague knot and the rest of the time I just left it loose."
Lily knows this. She knows that the loose tie was not a fashion choice but just a visible admission of laziness. She is wise enough to keep quiet for once.
"There was so much he still had to teach me and so much I still had to learn. And he's gone now so I suppose I never will."
James' quiet acceptance of this fact is more upsetting than the information itself. The hot sting of tears tingle at the corners of Lily's eyes but she is strong enough to not let them fall. There is a lump in her throat and she knows that if she tries to speak she will sob.
"I just thought we'd have more time, you know?" James' voice is quiet and Lily knows what he wants to hear. She knows exactly what she should say but instead, she knows that he needs to hear the truth.
Lily willfully swallows around the lump in her throat.
"That's everyone's problem, James; we all assume we'll have more time. The truth is sometimes we just don't."
Lily pulls the silk over her head and finally has the courage to look James in the eyes. She hands the knotted tie over to him and attempts a smile that is more of a grimace. James stares at her and he reaches out to take the gift.
Lily knows that it just looks like a tie but it feels a lot like an olive branch.
You never know when they'll be gone for good.