Dream Girl Evil

They eat dinner as a unit; Mr. and Mrs. Potter, James, Sirius, Lily, and Remus. School is nearing. They’ll go into Diagon Alley over the weekend to buy new robes and books. Mr. Potter asks if they’ve finished their summer homework yet, and the table goes suspiciously silent. Lily doesn’t think Sirius has even looked at the requirements yet. He lives on a nepotism baby mindset. It unfortunately carries him through life.

“Lily, do you have enough wizard currency?” Mr. Potter asks.

She nods, mouth full of karahi. She does not have enough money.

“Let us know if you need any help with anything, alright?” Mr. Potter says.

She swallows. “Yeah, Dad. I will.”

Lily reaches to the center of the table for another helping, not noticing that the entire table has frozen. She shoves another bite into her mouth and looks at James as she usually does. He’s staring at her, eyes small behind his thick-lensed glasses.

“What?” She says to him.

Beside James, Sirius shrugs and takes a bite of food. Someone must kick him under the table because he kind of begins to choke.

“I don’t get it.” She looks to Remus for guidance, but he is pointedly looking at the ceiling, head pointed upwards. He missed a few spots on his neck shaving. 

It’s when she looks to Mr. Potter that she finally understands. James is frozen, Sirius is choking, Remus is extremely uncomfortable, and Mrs. Potter has a quivering lip.

“Oh my God, Mr. Potter, I’m so sorry,” she spits out all at once. She cannot believe that she called him ‘Dad’. She has a dad. Had. Has. Tenses are fickle things. “I don’t even know why I said that. Just… just ignore it. That. Forget that I said that.”

“Lily, dear.” Mr. Potter smiles fondly. His eyes are so soft. There the exact same as James’; hooded, warm and brown, long eyelashes. He radiates the energy of a father – he is everything that a father should be, better than how God designed it. “Will you forgive me if I don’t forget?”

Lily blinks rapidly. Her voice wavers when she speaks. “Yeah… yes. I’ll forgive you.”

He takes her hand and squeezes it. They sit beside each other at the dinner table. He releases her hand and says, “I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

She lets out a breath, tears falling with it, and launches her hands around his neck. Has she ever been wanted before? Has she ever been anything but a nuisance? Has she ever been loved unconditionally?

She opens her eyes and sees Mrs. Potter, hands clasped against her mouth, tears in her eyes, like she’s been waiting for this. 

“Mum,” Lily says, reaching a hand out, and that just makes her sob harder. She’s had a dad, but she has never had a mum.

“Oh, my dear.” Mrs. Potter takes that hand and kisses it. She tucks a piece of Lily’s hair behind her ear and kisses her forehead. “We love you so much. More than you could ever know.”

Lily lets go of Mr. Potter and wipes at her eyes. The boys are all holding hands, sarcastically soppy. She kicks Sirius underneath the table and he squeezes out a pained, “Not again.”

Mr. Potter pats Lily’s hand, then puts some more food on his plate, and that’s that. 

Lily has a family again. 

Across the table, she makes eye contact with James, and he grins mischievously. It’s so like his parents. He jerks his head in Sirius’ direction, who is unassumingly bent over his plate, eating his shrimp like a dog.

James holds up one, two, three fingers, and all of the kids at the table kick Sirius right in the shins.

He yelps frustratedly and shouts, “I bloody hate this family!”

Lily smiles at Remus and says, “I love it.”

~

After dinner, Lily finds James outside smoking a cigarette all alone. It’s dusk, that time of day right when the sun has set but the moon hasn’t risen. Darkness so deep that it’s hard to see, just enough light for shadows and outlines. Close up, it’s like looking through grainy film, watching a colored movie.

He’s on the steps that lead out back, and he’s probably on his second or third cigarette judging by how long he’s been outside. 

Lily sits down beside James. They’re barefoot. It gives this natural feeling. Unstoppable. 

“How’s it?” Lily asks. The woods are in the distance, much more foreboding than they were just a few hours ago. Who knows what lurks in there at night. Who knows what lurks in there during the day?

James flicks ash into the grass. “Alright. You?”

“Alright.”

Lily is positively thrumming with electricity. She wonders if James can feel the radiation, if she gets under his skin as much as he gets under hers. It’s the perfect time to do it. To tell him. 

James stubbed his cigarette out on the concrete steps and stood up with a grunt. He vanished the two butts on the stairs and began walking away, already lighting another cigarette. Chainsmoker. Addict.

“Where’re you going?” Lily calls after him.

“The creek. You wanna come?”

“Sure.” She stands up. Her knee cracks. She is seventeen but she feels like she’s middle-aged. “The usual spot?”

“Yeah.”

The little secluded corner where forest meets creek, a rocky sandbar. Where they played and talked for hours, shirking all responsibilities in favor of each other. Lily knows what it looks like in the daytime, how the trees above create a canopy, how the sun shines through the green water to show the tiny fish. The stones skipped on water, the forgotten trees they climbed.

What would it look like at dusk? When it wasn’t dark nor light enough for eyes to understand, when anything could hide in the shadows?

“We’re not wearing any shoes,” James notices, sort of like an afterthought.

“Oh well.” Lily shrugs. “My dad used to say that going barefoot builds character.”

“More like bunions.”

She snorts.

Lily keeps her eyes on the uneven terrain, struggling to see. When they reach their man-made path in the forest, they take a hard right. It’s thin and faintly muddy. Lily feels the dirt get in between her toes.

Crickets chirp and bugs buzz. Owls hoot and wind rustles through the branches. The air is humid, rain is on the horizon. Maybe it’ll rain tonight? What will they do if it rains? How will they get back to the house, feet bare and lungs raw?

“Do you come to the creek a lot? At night, I mean,” Lily says. They’ve reached the sandbar.

James jumps down, then holds his hand out for Lily to grab onto as she jumps. “A fair bit, yeah. I like the solitude.”

“Am I disrupting your solitude?” Lily asks jokingly, letting go of James’ hand before she can think to hard about it. 

“You could never,” he says with a smile. 

The rocks are hard on the bottoms of Lily’s feet. She hasn’t built up calluses this summer. 

“I like to skip rocks.” James crouches down where the water meets the rocks and starts sorting through them. “It’s easier when Sirius isn’t here to distract me.”

Lily crouches beside him, also looking for rocks. He stands up first and says, “Call it.”

“Two.”

“Aw, you doubt my ability, Evans. Four.” He flicks it into the water and counts it out loud. Three.

“It’s a draw.” Lily finds an adequate rock and lines up her throw. She never properly learned how to do this. “Call it, Potter.”

“One.”

She drops her stance and looks at him incredulously. “Are you kidding me?”

“Zero.”

Lily punches James lightly. “Dipshit.”

He laughs as Lily throws it and it sinks right away, hitting the water at an angle and barely splashing as it goes down. She sighs and frowns at the water. It never looks that hard when James does it.

“Here,” he says, grabbing a rock off the ground and stepping up beside Lily. He hands her the rock.

She takes it.

James reaches around her body and holds her around her right hand, where the rock is. “Have a light grip. Put your finger on the side. There, like that.”

Lily’s heart flutters. She glances back at James, but can’t for long. He’s close. His breath is on her neck.

“Put this leg out.” He taps her left leg.

Lily gulps and does as she’s told. There’s no energy in her body for arguing, for their typical banter. She’s thinking about him holding her like this. She’s thinking about not needing an excuse.

“You can kinda move back and forth. It’s kind of an unsteady base, but it’ll give you momentum.” James draws her hand back.

She slides on a damp rock, and he puts a hand on her waist to steady her. On her stomach, thumb on her back. His breath hitches. He’s feeling it to. He knows.

They both know.

“And then you just,” James says breathlessly, “just flick it. Ready?”

Lily nods.

“Okay. One… two…”

James squeezes her waist.

“Three.”

Lily is on fire. It’s on her hair, it’s in her bones. Her magic courses with the feeling. Her wand is inside.

The stone skips three times before Lily turns and looks at James. He lets go. Realizes that he doesn’t need to hold her anymore. Lily wishes he wouldn’t.

“Five,” James says.

Lily sucks in a deep breath. She takes in the dark trees, the trickling water, the slimy stones. She’s going to do it. She’s going to do it here. Make or break.

James is looking at her like he knows what she’s going to say. Maybe it’s fake hope. Maybe he used to look at her like this a lot and Lily never saw it before. He’s scratching his neck. He’s watching her like he’s expecting something.

“James, I–”

“Lily, think about it,” he says. He knows what’s on her mind. He knows what she’s going to tell him. His hand drops by his side. Lily wants to hold it. “Think about it.”

“I’ve thought about it,” she says, heart in her throat. She’s breathless like she’s been swimming. “In fact, I think about it a lot – you, I… you. I think about you all the time. All the bloody time.”

“No. Come on.”

“I love you, James. I can’t help it.”

“Lily, no.”

“What?”

“You can’t just,” he rubs his neck with his palm and blinks hard, “you can’t just say that. You… you can’t.”

“But I’m not just saying that. I’m feeling it too!”

James shakes his head, jaw tight. “I have spent my… my entire life loving you. My whole life. I didn’t care if you broke me as long as I just got to be around you. I was finally – finally – moving on. You can’t just rope me back into this. It’s not fair. You’re not playing fair.”

“I can’t live without telling you!” Lily exclaims. “It was tearing me apart. I couldn’t function. I couldn’t breathe!”

He wheels around and looks at her, “That’s how I’ve felt my whole life. You don’t know anything about how torturous love can be.”

“Oh, boo-hoo,” Lily says, unforgiving. “What do you want me to do? Hold it in? Be in pain?”

“No, I–”

“Would you prefer to not know?”

“Yes!” He takes a step closer to her, intense, loud and big. Eyes magnified by thick lenses, t-shirt collar stretched wide over his shoulders. Stubble on his chin. “I was almost over you.”

“Almost,” Lily whispers.

His eyes flicker down to her lips. He looks to the side, to the forest, the creek. “You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

James takes one step back, biting his lip, looking at Lily like he’s seeing her. 

“James, I think I’ve always felt like we were inevitable,” Lily admits, voice thick. There’s wind in the air and it whips through her hair, kicking it onto her lips. “I didn’t realize it until recently, but I’ve felt that way for a long time.”

“How long?” He demands.

“Beginning of sixth year, maybe. I wanted so badly to hate you. To–to not care about you.”

“How do you think that made me feel, Lily?” He asks. 

“I know,” she says. 

“No, you don’t know!” James steps closer to her once more, this time with so much force that Lily has to move back, stumbling. “It wasn’t some passing fantasy. It was never – never – just an obsession. I had a crush for years. I fell in love with you. Every time I looked at you my heart was on fire. I was nauseous and preoccupied and insecure. Loving you is exhausting. I don’t know how but you buried yourself into my lungs and refused to leave. I can’t breathe, Lily. I can’t. Breathe.”

“I know that now,” Lily says, softer, not liking the way that James flits between past and present tense. She’s losing him. She’s losing him. She can’t lose him. “I’m here now. But–but, I’m not going to apologize for realizing so late and I’m not going to apologize for the way that you feel. None of that is my fault.”

“I know.”

“I love you now,” she continues. “That is what is important. Now. Now I love you. I guess it’s… I guess it’s up to you.”

A breeze fluffs the side of James’ hair and sneaks through his thin t-shirt. It touches Lily’s cheeks and dives down her esophagus, a cold breeze that makes her want to cough. 

“Here I am,” she says, laying herself bare, tears biting at the back of her throat. 

“You’re tearing me apart.”

“I don’t have to.”

“You’ll break me.”

“Maybe.”

James lets out a breath and runs a hand through his hair. He’s sporadic. He’s never care-free. He is seventeen and he’s tired but he’s so good. Quietly, he says, “I’m scared.”

Lily dares to step forward, soft like she’s hunting a deer, rifle in her hands, aiming for the heart. “Me too.”

“There’s no going back,” he says. 

“Good.”

James lunges forward and kisses her. 

His lips are chapped and he kisses like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, like he’s figuring it out as he goes. There’s tongue and then there’s not. Lily’s hands are under is shirt. His skin is warm and rough and she feels his stubble on her chin and there’s teeth in the kiss, stumbling because they’re standing, because James is so much taller.

It’s the best kiss Lily has ever had. She needs to be closer. It’s been years. She’s known him for years. She’s loved him for months. She wants to hold him until he can’t breathe, until she can crawl inside his lungs and hibernate there. She has him now. She won’t give him up.

There’s a drop of water on her arm. On the top of her head. She’s crying just a little bit. It’s relief. A weight off her chest, a monster satiated. 

James pulls back. The smile on his face is glorious. Lily can’t remember seeing such an unrefined smile from him. This is James. Crooked, chipped teeth. Gums, dimpled cheeks. It reaches his eyes and he laughs, pulling Lily in again.

It’s raining. It drops down onto the water and splatters around them. The rocks are slippery. They’re smiling as they kiss. It’s getting better as they go.

“Lily, Lily…” James murmurs, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear, just looking at her.

She hums, tight in his arms, content. There’s a smile on her closed lips and she never wants this moment to end.

“Please tell me that you’ll be my girl.”

She throws back her head and lets out an ugly laugh. She doesn’t care. James loves her no matter what.

“C’mon.” He squeezes her waist. “Be my girl.”

Lily nods, biting her bottom lip. “Yeah. Yeah, James. I’m your girl.”

He smiles, then kisses her so hard that she nearly falls back onto the rocks. They stumble, James holding them up. Lily holds onto his strong arms and imagines a life like this. A life in which she can have James Potter.

“I love you,” James says, kissing her neck. “I love you.”

Lily believes it.