"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
December 1976
"What are you doing?"
Lily had seemingly apparated out of thin air right next to James at the street in front of her house. She couldn't have because they were obviously not of age and therefore not allowed to use magic outside of school grounds but at the time that did not reason with James as he jumped, startled by the red-head.
"Merlin Evans! How did you do that? Do you levitate or something? God"
She rolled her eyes but smiled nonetheless. "You're the creep who's hanging by my house, and" she squinted out to the window he had been previously throwing gravel to, "what, trying to wake my mother up? That's her bedroom window" she pointed.
"Oh" he said, looking up as well, dropping the rest of the gravel he held and dusting his hands off. "My bad, I guess those are not your lilies drawings hanging, then?"
"Please, I have the artistic dexterity of a thumbless spider-monkey."
He smirked. "That's awfully specific."
"Yes well, I do have a way with words" she said smugly, raising her chin and James tried to smother the feeling of elation for their easy-going banter after being apart from each other for a few days now, since Christmas holidays started.
Lily noticed his gaze and looked away, fiddling with a strap on her bag. "So- what are you doing here, anyway? You lost?"
James cleared his throat. "No I, hum- I wanted to give you this", he handed her a creme envelope, vanilla scented with a soft touch paper.
She took it, curious and careful to hold the quality invite.
"It's mum's Christmas party" James explained "I remembered how you said your sister didn't like you getting letters from an owl so I just thought it best to handed it myself."
Lily looked up at him who's hand had naturally gone to play with his hair as soon as it was free from the envelope. But for the first time (that she took notice) she didn't find it annoying. In fact, the whole gesture of him coming over to invite her made her eyes shine especially bright - which he noticed and made him fidget further.
She opened the envelope and saw a beautiful and tasteful invite to a holiday party, at the Potter's house, in a couple days time. She was admiring the lettering of the signature with a small smile when James couldn't put off the silence no longer.
"You don't have to go… if you don't want to. I told mum you probably already had plans and-"
"I'd love to" she interrupted, looking up at him and making him freeze his hand mid scrap.
"You would? You mean, you will?" he beamed.
She smiled brighter and said firmly. "Yes, I will. Thank you for inviting me."
He grinned. "Brilliant. No, yeah, mum will be thrilled."
She giggled and his heart swell.
"What do you have there?" he asked her, curious.
"Hm? Oh," she looked down at the plastic bag she was holding in her other hand and reached the vinyl record she had just bought. "It's hum- it's Fleetwood Mac." She said in a asking tone, understanding he'd probably wouldn't know of them. "It's a band, their new single just came out and I was going to play to hm… well, to hear it with my dad."
She pulled her sleeve awkwardly and pressed her lips to wait for his reaction.
"Oh… I didn't know your father was a ghost." James shared innocently and Lily laughed.
"No- no, he's not, he hum-" she chuckled again, thinking of the silliness of her life's duality. "He's not a ghost, I just… I was going to sit down by his grave and hear it- with, you know, him." She grimaced. "It's odd, I know-"
"No" he stopped her in a serious tone. "No, it's not. I think it's lovely you keep sharing your life with him. Honestly I mean, Padfoot's mum wouldn't hear him talk, let alone listen to music together and she's very much alive, unfortunately- sorry, shouldn't say that." He was talking fast and she laughed which made him thankful to pause and breath.
"Dad always had such an ear to good music, you know? They're both artists, mum and dad, in their own way but none is like, an artist artist in reality. Mum used to say that dad had the best of rock'n'roll life, with all the exquisite taste without the whole cocaine addiction." She giggled to herself and he smiled with her.
Lily took off the single vinyl and gazed over the black and yellow cover. "By the end, he said that he should have done it tough, joined a band, toured the world… the whole thing" she ran her hand along the song titled 'Go Your Own Way' and continued quietly, with a touch of sadness in her voice. "I never told mum this but once, in a bad day, I heard him say that he wished he had been one of them instead, one of the 27 Club, you know…" James didn't know but he desperately wanted to. "Jones, Hendrix, all died a couple of years ago in their prime, overdosed…" She gazed thoughtfully to the house. "I don't think he meant it- not really."
Lily sighed and stowed the vinyl record back in its bag. James wasn't sure what type of reply she wanted from him, but she didn't seem to be asking for one.
"Do you want to come?" she asked him casually and James widened his eyes to meet her neutral gaze.
"Why?" He let out before he could have a hold of himself.
She shrugged in response. "Do you have any better plans than listening to a song that I have no idea if it's good or not, in a muggle cemetery, through an old record player?"
"Well jeez Evans, when you put it like that, how could a bloke refuse?"
"What, you have a bag full of these invites to creep up on the whole block, door by door?" she teased.
"No, but I also was invited to play the harp with vampires and draw some paintings with zombies so, you know, listening to music in a cemetery has serious competition-"
She smacked her bag on his side. "Oh, just forget it, you prat!"
He laughed, pretending to recoil. "Alright, alright, I'll join your weird little cult. But if you try to sacrifice me I must tell you- I'm not a virgin."
Oh.
Oh, why did he just say that?
She froze and a bright flush appeared on her cheeks. James quickly broke eye contact, awkwardly clearing his throat.
"So, hum, where's that record player then?"
She averted her eyes and started walking to the front steps. "Right, I'll hum, I'll go get it now just- wait here."
He nodded in response, locking eyes one last time before she entered the house.
"Again."
Lily sighed but was amused. "Look why don't you just take it with you for now and you can give it back when I come over?"
James looked at her as if she had said something scandalous.
"What about you?"
Lily laughed. "I think hearing it fifteen times for the last hour is enough for me to hold onto the meantime 'till you buy yourself a copy."
"Well first I need to get one of these" he said mentioning the record player he had carried from her place and had been sitting on the grass, next to both of them.
"You mean you don't have one? Won't your party have music?" Lily asked, bringing her knees up close to her reddening nose from the winter sun.
"Of course we do, mum is a matron of the Magical House of Music so it's sort of a ritual ceremony for the best pupils to come play."
Lily raised her eyebrows. "I'm not so sure I won't be sick that day any more…"
He waved her statement away. "It's not a big deal, it's no Fleetwood Mack."
She scrunched her nose to tease him. "That's such a money thing to do, to dismiss said money."
He rolled his eyes. "Well I'll spare you the whole 'money doesn't bring you happiness' narrative then, and just let mum do it herself when you meet her."
"I haven't met her before, have I?" James noticed her cosying up and instinctively got closer so they could feel each other's warmth.
"Hum, maybe? Were you the one asking her who's grandchild was she dropping at King's Cross or was that just Padfoot?"
Lily's eyes widened in shock and James laughed at her face.
"He did, really?"
"He did" James nodded, still laughing.
"Oh that's terrible, I hope he has apologized since"
"Nah, it's alright. They prefer to see themselves as lucky for being able to have me at all."
Lily bit the inside of her cheek and tilted her head. "What about you? How do you feel?"
"Me?" he asked and she nodded. "Oh I feel great!, I'm the golden child and heir to the long and proud history of the Potter family tree… lucky me!"
Lily pressed her lips and gave him that look of maddening superiority tinged with pity, like she always did when she felt compassion but was too kind to make someone feel bad about themselves.
"Yeah, I mean… it was a bit- lonely sometimes." He swallowed a lump from that word. "And I think that's why I was such a brat you know, when I started Hogwarts. I mean all of a sudden there was this castle, practically the size of my home, but filled with kids my age and older, to laugh at my jokes and play around and show off what I'd only been able to show mum over and over again."
Lily smiled listening to him and was starting to see the annoying little boy she had loathed in a different light, with a guilty pang at the pit of her stomach.
"I remember counting the days to start school, Summer of 1971 was the longest I have ever experienced. D'you… do you know that book, 'The House at Pooh Corner'?" James asked in a shy tone.
"Pooh? Winnie the Pooh?" Lily asked pleasantly surprised.
"The one and only."
And she laughed and he felt warm enough to continue, easily pushing his shyness away.
"Dad has always been a fun of how muggles inject magic in their creations. Well anyway, I loved those books growing up. Christopher Robin had all this friends, sharing adventures and being there for each other… I guess in my child brain, I just morphed that all into Hogwarts."
"Thank you for telling me that. I guess I never actually thought we were so much… alike, in a way."
He looked at Lily and she was listening so attentively, in that December sun, the light shining on her flushed pink cheeks and turning some of the strands of her red hair to gold, while the gentle breeze picked up some of them and blew them about. And those eyes, those big wide eyes… they seemed to glow sincere concern in a way that made his chest constrict painfully. Her beauty overthrew him, and it hurt to look at her.
He was gazing at her face when they both turned to someone calling out her name.
"Lily?"
Severus was standing a few meters from them, looking confused and disturbed. "What are you…?"
"Severus, what-what are you doing here?" Lily got up, flustered, unconsciously taking a few steps back.
"I came to wait here to find you as I've been doing for the last couple of days" he spat, bitterly.
James didn't much appreciate his tone, but said nothing as he got up as well.
"But I see you've been busy… Really Lily, you brought him here?" still the same cruel tone.
Maybe it was the surprise, the emotional rawness they had been sharing that morning or maybe it was something else Lily couldn't pinpoint yet, but she felt guilty somehow and embarrassed, as if she had just been caught doing something wrong.
"After everything he's done to you, that he's done to me… you're just OK with all that now? Suddenly it doesn't matter any more?"
She was looking fixedly at him, opening and closing her mouth a few times not knowing what to respond to his real question - if he didn't matter.
Feeling like he had the upper hand, Snape continued the road of making her feel guilty.
"You're really that desperate that you just throw all your morals away to not feel so lonely? Can't you see that Lily? You're being pathetic, you're smarter than this."
"Alright, that's enough" James stepped in and Snape turned to him, seeing red.
"And you," James looked back at him, impassive, chin high. "I heard what you said at the Three Broomsticks, I know the truth."
At this, James' eyes widened and his heart began pounding in his chest.
"You're lying to her and you're manipulating her, knowing how vulnerable she is. You just have to get everything you ever want, huh? If mummy and daddy can't get it for you, you just find a way to get it?"
"Stop it" Lily said, waking from her frozen state hearing him attack James.
"It's true Lily, you know it is, you have to listen to me he is not your friend-"
"Stop it!"
Lily shouted, forcing Snape to pause and James alert, looking at her.
"Not my friend?" Lily exhaled in a shaky breath. "What do you know about being a friend?"
Snape tried again, "Lily, you have to listen-"
"No" she said firmly, closing her eyes to regain composure. "No, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything you have to say." She had found her voice again and James was pleased and proud to hear the indignant, righteous tone imbued within it.
"You're right, I am vulnerable and-and lonely… this has been one of the worst years of my life and I needed a friend. I needed one more than anything and you weren't one. God-you haven't been here for, I don't know how long…"
"I've tried to apologize, I-"
"You missed my dad's funeral, Severus."
This made Snape close his mouth shut, clenching his jaw.
"You knew him, I cried with you when I found out about the cancer and now… you choose your pride and ego over being here for me."
Lily had started to tear up and James wanted to murder Snape for hurting her, being truly the first time he regretted ever saving him from Sirius' prank late the previous year.
"So please, leave him and me to rest, and don't come for me at all. Not now, not ever."
She breathed deep and marched away, wiping her tears as she passed by James who saw her leave with blood pounding in his ears with anger and pain for her.
Severus took a few steps back, starring at James with daggers in his look and then finally storming away.
James was tense, gripping his fists as he looked down to the record player which, he was only now realizing, was still playing static.