“Lils!” Mary strides forward, sitting beside Lily underneath a willow tree.
“Hey, Mars,” Lily smiles, putting her book aside, “You okay?”
“Mhm, more than okay! Amazing! I match-made Remus and Sirius!” She smiles widely.
“Isn’t Sirius your boyfriend?” Lily frowns.
“No? We broke up ages ago, did you forget?” Mary laughs breezily, the sound of water lapping over a beach and seabirds squawking reaches her eyes, strange, they were in a meadow? Wait, how’d she get here?
”Oh, yeah, I forgot, sorry,” Lily grimaces, sheepishly, “So how’d you do it?”
“Oh, I stuffed them in a wardrobe like you did with James and Regulus,” Mary laughs, stroking Lily’s hair, gently.
“I missed you,” Lily whispers, melting into Mary’s touch..
“I missed you too,” Mary replies, not sure why she missed Lily, she was always around the corner, right?
They lapsed into a comfortable silence as Mary braids Lily’s auburn hair, threading lace into it here and there. She’s not sure when the sounds of waves and seagulls started again but they did. Where were they coming from?
“Done,” she announces, grinning down at Lily’s hair, showing it to her in a mirror, wait where did the mirror come from?
“It’s beautiful Mary,” Lily whispers, letting her hand stroke across it.
“You’re beautiful,” Mary smiles at her softly, pressing a kiss to her forehead.
“Mary,” Lily puts her head in the other girl’s lap, “I love you,”
“I love you too, Lils,” Mary runs across her face, smoothing down her frown lines.
“Mary?”
“Yes darling?”
“Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you here?”
“Because- because… I don’t know,”
“I’m not real Mars, maybe in another world I am, maybe in another world we do this,” Lily whispers, a small tear sliding down her cheeks, “But for now, go back,”
“What?”
“Go back,” and that she does, she goes back to the horror that she calls her life and she sits up, panting, numbness slipping over her once more but not before a flash of pain corrupts her mind.
Pain.
Pain.
Pain.
A slash if a knife takes it away. A slash of a knife brings back the ones she loves. A slash of a knife brings her back to her flower.
“Lils.”