I Had All
I made good my threat to sleep outside the portrait in Gryffindor Tower. I’m losing my sanity out here, bargaining with a god I don’t know. If I could take back only ten minutes of my entire life, I would choose fighting those Marauders, hanging by my ankle humiliated, and calling you a slur.
No, if I could take back only two minutes. Hanging exposed, and the slur, Lily.
No, please, just forty seconds of my life, of my whole life. I would take back those forty seconds of my words and your hatred. Please.
I Disillusion myself in the magical sense long before I’ll ever disillusion myself from thinking you’ll come back to me. I lay here, invisible, night after night. You know I’m here, so no one else needs to.
Eventually, the night comes when it’s you who opens the portrait. You are in the night dress you once let me touch. I cry out a million words that brewed on my tongue for you, my love, but again, I am told to save my breath.
You didn’t come out for me. You came out for Remus Lupin, who is recovering after a night of the full moon. And yet he is less monstrous to you than I am.
“Lily…”
“No. No. I kept trying to hold on, but I lost you. I completely lost you to this.”
“You lost me? Damn it, Lily, you didn’t lose me at all! I’m right here!”
“No. You’re not the same. You’re not who I met. And you know what, you’re sure as hell not who I fell in love with.”
You shove me out of the way with magic and run down the tower, crying tears that will dry sooner than mine.
You loved me?
That makes this even worse.