Chapter Text
2018
Bonnie hugged her tightly in arrivals and didn't let go for a very long time.
"You're home," she kept on repeating, murmuring the words in her ear like a most precious secret, her voice thick with muffled sobs as they held one another, clasped together like two halves of a locket, the only two people in a jostling, ceaseless crowd. "You're home, you're home, you're home."
"I'm really home."
"Don't you dare leave us again."
"I won't," Lily promised.
It was a reunion that was worthy of a soundtrack of its own, but they made do with the footsteps of passers-by and static loudspeaker announcements about unattended baggage. There was time for a soundtrack later. Lots of time. So much time. A long and blissful stretch of time, and a thousand songs to fill it.
That was their thing, soundtracks. Hers and Bonnie's and Beatrice's. They'd survived their teens by way of imagination, pretending that life was one big movie and selecting the music to match it as they went. The Lily of years back starred in hundreds of performances in messy bedrooms, twirling in front of mirrors, singing into brushes, creating costumes from jumbled pools of clothes until no one could remember who owned what, linking arms and shaking their hips and tossing their hair like models. She had been a dozen different girls with a dozen different plots, some beautiful, some misguided, and some that changed her in ways she hadn't anticipated.
When it all turned so predictably tragic (a dramatic, heightened, teenage kind of tragic) Lily's naïve belief in the innate, glowing, Hollywood-polished magic of living had collapsed in on itself, but that was fine. Everybody had to grow up one day, even if it happened when they weren't at all prepared.
Soundtracks, though. They were a very different thing.
"I'm locking you up in the bathroom when we get back," said Bonnie in the car, accompanied by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The soundtrack for their journey was a collection of songs that told of homecomings and triumph, all of which she had chosen to fit the occasion. "I'll let you take a shower first, but then the cuffs are going on."
Lily smiled at her from the passenger seat, counting the studs and rings that ran the length of Bonnie's ear, noting the swirl of colours in the freshly-healed tattoo on her arm, drinking in the welcome sight of her favourite cousin. "You know I'm really not going to leave again, right?"
"I do, and I'll believe you once I've gotten accustomed to the fact that you’re actually here, but I'm locking you up until then. Who else is gonna know?"
"My parents know. Petunia knows."
"Oh, fuck Petunia," Bonnie spat, then with a violent, impassioned burst of joy, "seriously, fuck her!"
"Fuck her!" Lily seconded, laughing.
Bonnie rolled down the window of her ancient silver Corsa, her arm working furiously, stuck her head out into the rain and screamed, "Fuck Petunia!"
"Fuck Petunia!"
The car flew down the M23 like it had wings, and when they tired of screaming obscenities, they sang along with their soundtrack, because they were still young enough, and they were living, and Lily felt like happiness was easy.
Even if her life was not a movie.
Reality had a charm all of its own, when it was in the mood for it.
*
The window was floor to ceiling glass, and all of it battered with rain.
July should have been brighter, he thought, perched on the edge of his bed, his feet buried in a luxuriously thick white rug that he would need to have professionally cleaned after last night's red wine fiasco.
Or maybe he'd forget, so his mum would make him do it, or he'd chuck the whole thing out and buy another.
He didn't even like red wine.
The hot summer sun should have been spilling into every corner of the room with a vibrant disregard for his desire to sleep, burning his hungover eyes awake, but all James Potter could see outside were smoky wisps of grey and a restless, shimmering downpour.
The flat was a posh penthouse in Canary Wharf and James had bought it—slapping a big, pretty bow on a year that had gutted him clean—for the fucking views in the first place, expecting sunshine and a bright blue sky. Towering above the Thames, it might have felt good to survey the city at his feet on the right kind of day, seeing all while remaining unseen, but he never seemed to find the inclination to do it. There was rain to be found at the top; more rain than he'd noticed before he moved in.
Up on high, there was no need for blinds or curtains, but after six months James still struggled to feel like he wasn't exposed to prying eyes that weren't really there. He still couldn't walk around naked, even when he was in the flat alone.
His girlfriend had no such trouble with her own bare skin. Ali walked around the place like she had never heard of clothes, tossing her hair artfully over her shoulder, shooting him coy looks as she slipped from one room to another, often taking personal offence if the sight of her body didn't provoke immediate arousal.
It mostly did, because she was gorgeous. Sometimes it didn't, because he was only human, and a body wasn't always capable of reacting on demand, but she never looked as if she liked that explanation.
She did like the penthouse, however. Loved it. She loved it so much that it had been months since James had seen the inside of her flat, and that was fine. At least one of them liked it here.
Luckily for him, Ali was at some sort of spa retreat for the morning, and he wouldn't see her until the party, where he'd hopefully resemble something close to human or risk exacerbating her anxiety.
That was his fault. The anxiety.
His head was swimming with a foggy kind of pain, not to mention his shoulder, which throbbed angrily and demanded immediate attention. No doubt it was the result of some drunken injury that he couldn't at that moment recall. He shouldn't have let Sirius talk him into wine again. The taste was foul, and his body always paid for it the next day.
Sirius, the prick, was probably still asleep. James decided that he should go and find him, or a greasy fry-up, or perhaps a cold, tiled floor to lie down on. He feared he might have been dangerously close to vomiting at any minute.
"Alexa," he said aloud, threading winding pathways through his hair with one hand while the other reached for his glasses. "Shuffle my hangover playlist."
Like the gentle, sympathetic mother that his own had never been, Alexa complied, and the room was filled with the dulcet tones of Leon Bridges, who sang about coming home to a woman who made him feel the way James didn't.
The music fit the rain, it occurred to him, once his glasses were on, and he was rubbing hard circles into his bare shoulder with the base of his hand. Muted and beautiful and soft, smoky grey, and unlikely to make him feel any better in the long run.
A snapshot of this sparse, stylish, twenty-first-century room would have made him look like a character in a movie.
That was patently fucking ridiculous.
*
"I know it's not Manhattan—"
"You're so hung up on Manhattan."
"Don't interrupt me," said Bonnie flatly. "Obviously, I don't personally feel the need to compete with such a place, but I'm doing this hard sell whether you like it or not. You're not allowed to piss all over it."
A freshly-showered Lily shut her bedroom door behind her, crossed the room and sat down on the arm of the sofa.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "Please continue with your hard sell."
There really wasn't a need for it, but she was happy to let Bonnie have her way.
The flat was a reasonably large space with three bedrooms, a charming little balcony and an open plan dining and living area. Almost every item in the room, from the dining chairs to the curtains to the worn, lumpy cushions on the sofa, was brightly coloured and entirely mismatched. Ferns, roses and white orchids were draped across every spot where it may have made sense to house a plant, courtesy of the third housemate, an artisan florist named Kingsley, who Lily was yet to meet in person but got along well with online. An intricately woven African rug took pride of place on the floor, the bookcase was extremely well stocked, and the walls were adorned with abstract metal wall hangings that Bonnie had picked up for a song at a flea market in Camden.
Lily loved it already.
"Thank you." Bonnie flipped an errant, frizzy curl out of her face and began again. "As I was saying, we may not be Manhattan or Manhattan-adjacent, and yes, your room might only fit a single bed—"
"I've slept in single beds before, Bon."
Not to be deterred, Bonnie held one hand aloft to silence her, and moved towards the window like she was demonstrating a prize on a game show. The weather had been unexpectedly drizzly for an afternoon in mid-July, and the sun was only just beginning to peep through the clouds, while the various plants arranged on the sill stretched valiantly towards what little light they could get.
"As you can see," she said, "we live next to a lovely park, which isn't even that big on knife crime until after sunset. Plus, we have real hardwood floors, and we're a five minute walk from the vagina museum, which I particularly appreciate, although Kingsley does not."
"And you're here."
"And I'm here," she agreed. "That was going to be my big finish, but whatever."
Even presenting herself as the main attraction, Bonnie was downplaying her own importance. Lily had spent the past decade moving from place to place—first the student dorms in Sarah Lawrence, then a series of apartments with appallingly high rents—and was very familiar with all the problems associated with living with other people. She could have afforded to live alone in London because her parents had money, in fact they had a lot of money, and the job that she was soon to start paid a decent wage, but what she'd wanted more than anything upon her return to the city was a home with a friendly face attached.
She, Bonnie and Beatrice had once cherished an ambition to live together as a trio, but that hope had been dashed by time and circumstance. First Lily had left for America, and after several years of living with Bonnie, Beatrice eventually moved in with her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend who had recently proposed.
Their engagement party, which Bea and Remus had decided to throw in their favourite pub, was starting in a matter of hours.
"You really don't need to sell London to me, you know," Lily reminded her. "I am from here—"
"And you didn't pick up a Yank accent, thank God."
"Also, haven't I mentioned a dozen or so times that I'm done with New York, much as I love it? Have I not also mentioned that I love you and never want to leave you again? It's important that you know that."
Bonnie let out a short laugh. "You don't need to be such a sap about it."
"And you don't need to convince me to stay," Lily countered.
"Fine, if you're going to insist," said Bonnie, lifting a leg daintily behind her. She blew Lily a kiss from the window. "Just wait until Bea sees you later."
"She'll slaughter us for not telling her sooner."
"She won't, she'll be too happy to care."
"Until about a week later, when she gets over it and kills us both."
"Who'll be her maid of honour then?" said Bonnie. "Her sister?"
"Kingsley, maybe?"
"She keeps saying that she'll make him wear an unflattering patterned gown for the wedding if he skips out on the hen."
"Imagine how that'd look in the photos."
For the sake of springing a surprise upon her friend, Lily had let everyone but Bonnie, her aunt Chrissy, her sister and her parents—who were living in Marbella now anyway—believe that she had no intention of leaving New York any time soon. Beatrice was under the impression that Lily would be coming to her wedding, but that she couldn't make herself available for bridesmaid duties, let alone be her maid of honour.
Lily could hardly wait to see her later.
"Kingsley would look gorgeous in any gown, but since we're speaking of photos, we need to leave now if we want to make our appointments," said Bonnie, examining her faint reflection in the window. "Got to make sure you're looking fab when you confront the dreaded ex, wash the smell of cream cheese bagels out of your hair, be Instagram ready, et cetera, et cetera."
Lily delicately ignored the topic of her dreaded ex and sent Bonnie a flat look. "Can they scrub the stereotypes out of your brain?"
"They're hairdressers, Lily, not cognitive therapists." Bonnie spun around, picked up her handbag, and slung it over her shoulder. "Let's go get you gorgeous."
Lily climbed to her feet to get her own purse, and her cousin landed a feather-light smack on the back of her head as she passed her by.
It was good to be home.
*
The story of how Remus Lupin's fiancée informally adopted James was not very interesting, but it was odd, because they'd never been particularly close before.
Then again, Beatrice had never been particularly close to anyone in James's group of friends until she started seeing Remus. Even though she and James had gone to school together, and even though their circles had… intersected, they'd never evolved much beyond a friendly acquaintance, but all of that had changed quite recently.
His dad died.
It was heart attack that did it; quick thing, and completely unexpected. Fleamont had been fit and well for his age. He ran half-marathons for charity. It never should have happened.
It had, though.
Just bad luck, the doctor had said. His official diagnosis. Bad luck. Just bad luck that James didn't have a father anymore.
For no reason beyond the fact that he'd never figured out what he wanted to do with his life, he'd been working at the company his father had built from the ground up—just a stopgap, something to do until he eventually got around to discovering what he actually wanted—when that meteor smashed into their lives, and Fleamont’s death left a hole that his son felt obligated to fill, ill-equipped and unprepared as he was. That was quite enough stress to be getting on with, but the inconvenient thing about being bereaved (one of many inconveniences which James had not been prepared for) was that it made casual conversation uncomfortable. Most of his colleagues took to speaking to him with a false, condescending cheer, such as one might employ when talking to a child. Others used hushed, doleful tones and painfully contrite faces. Some had no idea how to act, so they avoided him entirely.
They made James feel as if he were dying, too. Like a sad, lonely, pathetic little half-orphan.
He was a pathetic half-orphan.
Beatrice, though, also worked for Sleekeazy, and Beatrice continued to greet James with the same cheery, enthusiastic, "Alright, Jimmers?" every morning as if nothing had changed in the slightest. She never looked the other way when she saw him in a corridor. She never asked him how he was doing. At lunch she would tell him the stories she'd heard about Tambo in IT, who was trying his best to have an affair with Training & Development Sara behind the back of his wife, Amy in Finance, and it was nonsense, but James needed that nonsense. That nonsense was normality.
Above all, Beatrice was a decent person who made Remus happy, and James loved Remus like his own flesh and blood. He'd been for dinner in their flat in Whitechapel a few times since they'd moved in together, and if ever they pitied the tragic little brat who'd lost his daddy, they didn't let it show.
He appreciated that.
He appreciated it so much, in fact, that when Remus asked him to be his best man, James consented at once, even if it meant escorting Bonnie Grogan—who happily would have run James over with one of her grandad's tractors—down the aisle.
Luckily, Grogan was nowhere to be seen when James and his mates arrived at the party that evening. Sirius had offered his pub as a venue for the happy couple's celebration, and both were greeting guests at the door when they arrived. Beatrice ushered James, Ali, and Sirius inside with as much aplomb as if she was Amal Clooney—one of her style icons—at the launch of a charity gala.
"D'you like what I'm wearing?" she asked them, twirling around to display her yellow dress to its full advantage. "It's just like the one Amal wore to Meg and Harry's wedding. You can't even tell it's not Stella McCartney."
James, predictably, felt Alicia's hand twitch inside his own. Ali was wearing the Alexander McQueen he'd bought her for her birthday, and he knew that she was desperate to be asked about it.
"The McCartney was bespoke, though," Ali told their hostess, "so you can kind of tell? But not too much."
"Well, my sewing machine and I can only do so much, but I still look pretty damn good," Beatrice cheerfully responded, and a pink tinge flooded Ali's cheeks. "Your dress is absolutely gorgeous, though. Where did you get it?"
"Oh!" cried Ali softly, and launched into the tale of how she'd come to own the dress.
According to her, it was super romantic, but James couldn't quite agree. The "subtle hints" she'd left lying around his flat—namely actual print magazines, which apparently still existed, left open on pictures of the dress—had been obvious. Ali liked getting presents and James liked to buy presents, but she would have let the ground open up and swallow her whole before she asked for one directly.
"Bar?" he said to his mates in a low tone.
"Bar," Sirius agreed.
"Give me a bit and I'll join you," said Remus.
"Hey, sorry to interrupt." James gently squeezed Ali's hand and she halted in her monologue to look up at him. "We're just going to the bar to get a drink. Do you want anything?"
Predictably, a concerned look crossed her pretty face, her light blue eyes rounding like those of a scared kitten. "What are you having?"
"A Coke, probably."
"Just a Coke?"
"I might have a beer, but just one."
Ali chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, her brow furrowed in thought.
"Alright," she eventually agreed, albeit begrudgingly, and let go of his hand, "I'll have a white wine, please."
"Before you all go," said Beatrice, holding up a finger, "have any of you heard from Bonnie? She was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago and she's usually twenty minutes early for stuff like this."
"Not a thing," said Sirius.
"I think she posted a picture of herself in a hair salon on Instagram a few hours ago?" Remus supplied.
"Yeah, I know, but still..." Beatrice clucked her tongue. "She says she's got a surprise for me and I don’t like waiting for presents. Can one of you text her for me? My brother's gone off somewhere with my stuff."
Remus offered to stay with his bride-to-be and let her use his phone, so James and Sirius moved to the bar, where drinks were being served to Bea and Remus's many friends and colleagues.
"Feeling any better?" said Sirius, once they'd placed their orders and perched on two adjacent stools.
"Loads."
"You were fucked when I left this morning."
James refrained from pointing out that, far from being fucked, he had merely woken up in a bad mood, which sometimes happened when one was hungover, still grieving, and stuck doing their dead father's job without adequate knowledge or ability to do so. Sirius knew it all already. "That's a bit rich, considering I found you with your feet in my fridge."
"An honour it never expected, but I don't require payment. Your gratitude is more than enough."
"I'm the one who requires payment for the food you spoiled."
"There was stuff in there that I saw you put in when you first bought the place, so don't blame me for your rotten food," Sirius retorted, stroking his clean-shaven chin. "How long are we staying for?"
"Dunno, a few hours? Until we get bored?"
"Or until your girlfriend offends the hostess and gets kicked out on her arse?"
"Ali doesn't mean anything by it, and Beatrice isn't gonna chuck her out for a stupid comment about her dress."
"I know. Booth's alright," said Sirius darkly, pointing to the door with two fingers, "but she's gone postal for lesser offences."
James twisted in his stool to see that the elusive Bonnie Grogan had finally arrived on the scene and was chatting animatedly to the group they'd left behind. Her naturally dark curls were piled high atop her head, her lips were painted red, and she wore a shimmery silver dress that left very little of her chest to the imagination.
"Her tits look great," Sirius remarked, apropos of nothing.
"Charming," James intoned, "and Ali can't do anything more offensive to Grogan than date me, Satan's best mate. She'll be fine if the best she can do is insult Booth's clothes."
"You're not going to go over there and rescue her?"
"I have to wait for her drink, don't I?"
"Boyfriend of the year, you are," said Sirius, just as Remus drew up beside them. Alicia followed close behind, looking like an anxious icicle in her snow white dress.
James had wanted to tell her not to wear it to the party—she'd be devastated if it took the brunt of a spill—but that wasn't his call to make, so she was bound to be nervy all night.
"I'm pretty decent, actually," he told Sirius, and slid off the stool. He smiled at Ali and held out his arm to her. "C'mere you, I'll protect your snazzy gown from wayward beverages."
"Did Kingsley mention an audio-visual presentation to you?" said Remus to James.
His girlfriend, whilst tucking herself beneath his arm, slid her hand into his back pocket and squeezed, so he kissed the side of her head to indicate his appreciation. "No?"
"He and Bonnie planned one as part of a surprise, apparently."
"What? Like, for now?"
Remus pointed towards the back of the room, where a blank LCD television was mounted to the wall above a round, raised platform, generally used for sporting events and karaoke tournaments. "Our rapt attention will shortly be required, I've been told."
"Babe!" Beatrice called from the middle of the room, waving frantically at Remus.
"Duty calls," he quipped, and shot them a salute before speeding off.
There seemed to be nothing but a lot of bustle near the platform, but by the time their drinks had been served and they'd filled five minutes with pointless chit-chat, someone had turned on the telly, while Bonnie had procured a microphone from somewhere and taken the stage.
"Good evening, everyone!" she announced to the room in general, her voice blasting out of the speakers that were mounted at various points on the wall.
Next to James, Sirius let out a wolf-whistle.
Bonnie politely gave him the finger without looking at him and resumed her speech.
"As most of you will know," she began, looking irrepressibly excited about something, "my name is Bonnie Grogan, and I'm one of Beatrice's two best friends in the entire world." She paused for a smattering of polite applause. Scanning the crowd, James could see a beaming Beatrice, standing in front of Remus in the middle of the dance floor with the back of her head resting snugly on his shoulder, his arms wrapped loosely around her waist. "Now, it's very important that you know there are two of us, because the third member of our intrepid little gang, my favourite cousin, the lovely Lily—"
Something like an electric shock, but duller, its effectiveness worn down considerably by time, trickled along his spine, as it did whenever James heard that particular name mentioned.
He had hoped, once, that the sound of it might one day elicit no reaction at all.
A decade of waiting hadn't done him much good.
He had hoped, also, that he could one day say that hers was a name he hadn't thought of in years, but the truth was, he thought about it a lot. Whenever he saw a redheaded girl in the street. Whenever that one Kings of Leon song came on the radio. Whenever it stormed. Whenever it fancied popping into his head, for a myriad of inexplicable, unrelated reasons.
Or whenever her best friend mentioned it on stage in a function room that was packed with people who couldn't possibly know how it made him feel, because he'd done a truly excellent job of convincing all of her friends that he'd never felt a thing at all.
"—should, if we lived in a fair and just world, be here tonight, but unfortunately, she fucked off to live in America ten years ago, which is understandable, yeah? Why benefit from free healthcare when you can pay through the nose for it?"
Some members of the crowd gave an appreciative laugh, and Bonnie paused to smile and bask in their admiration before she took up her mic again.
"However," she said grandly, "since our Beatrice has finally gotten engaged to the love of her life, our missing Musketeer has prepared a lovely little video—"
All at once, James's throat grew terribly dry. A sudden, long dormant but horribly familiar excitement had bubbled up in his chest.
He took a hasty gulp of his drink.
"—for you all to watch. Or just Beatrice, honestly, we don't give a cow's wet shit about the rest of you."
Another collective laugh echoed past his ears like a bell ringing very far away, and James was acutely aware Sirius was watching him to gauge his reaction, but he kept his eyes on Bonnie, who had moved to the far left of the platform and picked up a small remote control from an otherwise empty table.
"Who's Lily?" murmured Alicia, clueless and happy, her fingers making idle exploration of his backside that he didn't want or care to acknowledge at this moment.
Nobody answered her.
Bonnie did something with the remote, and on the screen appeared a face that James had not been fortunate enough to see in real life for ten long years, just in his own photos, and the odd, rare sighting on other people's Instagram posts. Lily had blocked him on every single social media profile she'd ever used and likely ever started using in the meantime.
She was frozen in time, alight with life and smiling sweetly, a perfect picture of health and happiness and a stark contrast to the crying girl he'd been confronted with when last they met.
He hadn't forgotten that she was beautiful.
Utterly beautiful.
A singular, shining kind of beautiful that he'd always felt made every other kind of beauty seem completely obsolete.
It was comforting—and really fucking terrible—to see that this was still the case.
"Enjoy!" said Bonnie, and hit the play button.
"Hi, Beatrice!" sang the prettiest voice in the world, her smile widening as the video sprang to life, and Lily Evans waved merrily to the assembled crowd. "I'm so sorry that I can't be there to celebrate your big news, but I just wanted to say that I love you so, so much and I'm so happy that you and Remus have finally—"
"Not good enough!" Bonnie bellowed into the microphone.
Though the video was clearly pre-recorded, Lily immediately stopped talking as if she'd heard the interruption, and looked away from the camera, gazing instead in Bonnie's direction.
"Hi!" said Bonnie blithely, and gave the video a wave.
"Hi?" Lily responded, looking perplexed, and waved back at Bonnie. "Not that it's not nice to see you, Bon, but I'm trying to record a heartfelt message for Bea right now?"
"Oh, I know you are, but I've got some notes on how you could improve it."
"Now's really not a good time for notes—"
"I happen to disagree," said Bonnie, brandishing the remote control, "and remember, I can pause you if you fight me on this."
"They're doing a bit," said Sirius quietly. "Bonnie must have rehearsed it."
"Oh my god," Alicia breathed. "This is so cute!"
James could hear Beatrice laughing delightedly, but he couldn't move his eyes away from the screen.
He couldn't afford to lose a second of her face.
"It's just a quick video," Lily was saying, "I'm not presenting this to the Screen Actors Guild."
"That's the kind of creatively-bankrupt thinking that brought us three Fifty Shades movies."
"Well, fine, Spielberg," said Lily impatiently, "how do you suggest that I improve my message of love?"
"Easy," said Bonnie promptly. "Get up off your arse and move back here."
Lily let out a burst of laughter which drowned out the sound of the thunderclap in James’s chest. "I can't just move back home on a whim!"
"Sure you can, Dorothy, just click your heels together."
"But what about my—" Lily looked down at something off-camera, snorted with laughter and looked back at "Bonnie" with rapidly reddening cheeks. "I can't believe you're making me read this. But what about my fabulous life in New York City? What about Mr. Big? What about my collection of Manolo Blahniks?"
On the platform, Bonnie was also struggling to contain herself, while some of the crowd were giggling along. "Don't you love us more than Charlotte and Miranda?"
"Of course I do, but—"
"So move back home," said Bonnie, and crossed her arms like she meant business. "Go on, do it. I'll wait."
"But I—I just—how am I supposed to—oh, for Christ's sake!" Lily huffed with an accompanying stomp of her foot. "Hang on a second!"
Then she marched off camera, leaving a blank white wall and a sun-filled window behind her while a room full of party-goers in an East London pub looked around at one another and tried to understand the joke.
There was a hard, painful, panicky feeling pummelling against James's ribs, so monstrous that it was a miracle nobody else could hear it.
His palms had gone damp. Across the room, Remus was watching James, not the video. He could feel the eyes of everyone in the world upon him. He knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't rearrange his features into something that resembled normal because he had just realised exactly what was about to happen.
And exactly how fucked he was just about to be.
"Is this better?" came a cry from close to the entrance.
Every person in the room turned as one, as fluidly as a Mexican wave…
And there she was.
Lily Evans.
His Lily Evans, and her dark red hair that flowed over her shoulders, and her bright green eyes, and a triumphant smile that pulled at the corners of her lips.
She was merely feet away from him, his one and only, more dazzling and more lovely than even his oft-replayed memories had led him to believe, the same miraculous concoction of flesh and bone and stardust, of heart and soul and brain—those tightly spooled tendrils of wit and brilliance and overwhelming kindness, the depths of which he'd barely begun to penetrate before he'd lost her in the abyss—she'd always, always been.
Lily Evans, the only girl he'd ever really—
Lily Evans.
Lily Evans.
Lily fucking Evans.
The contents of his stomach took a violent, spinning leap.