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winryofresembool · 1 year

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Jily one-shot: Not on your own

Summary: James helps Lily to realize that she is not alone with her issues (6th year Hogwarts Jily)

Words: 3600+

genre: hurt/comfort

rating: G

AO3

A/N: Please let me know what you think!!

...

”Evans? What are you doing out here?”

Lily opened her eyes and quickly attempted to dry her tear streaked cheeks with her hands. She knew who the speaker was without turning to see him, cursing herself for choosing this out of all places as her hiding spot. Of course the captain of the Gryffindor team would show up at the Quidditch pitch well after their regular training hours. It was only natural, when talking about James bloody Potter.

The truth was that Lily was a bit overwhelmed with everything – school stuff, family stuff, the events outside Hogwarts, to name a few - and she had needed a place where she could let her emotions out without the entire Gryffindor house or at very least all her dorm mates witnessing her mental breakdown. She had decided to sneak out, not even caring that it was past curfew already, and eventually found herself in the Quidditch stand where her legs seemed to have carried her on their own accord.

“What?” she said defensively. “You think only Quidditch captains get to hang out here whenever they feel like it?”

“Nah, I didn’t say that.” He attempted to swipe his stupid, messy, annoyingly ruffleable hair to one side, with the result that it stuck up in all directions. “You know I really don’t care much about who goes out past curfew and who doesn’t. It’s just quite unusual to find you out of all the people here, and especially at this hour.” He was quiet for a moment, observing her face. “Were you just crying?” He asked then, with a quieter, gentler voice.

“Why would you care even if I was?” she muttered, but she didn’t really have the energy to put a lot of edge behind her words.

“You seem to have this idea that I enjoy seeing girls crying.” James frowned. Despite that, his voice was also calmer than what Lily would have expected, especially knowing how much James enjoyed provoking her. Or at least had enjoyed. The past few months they had somehow managed to form, if not a friendship, at least a friendly-ish acquaintance where they didn’t yell at each other at every possible opportunity anymore. James had been helping her with Transfiguration while she had been helping him with Potions and while doing that, she had come to realize that there was actually more to this boy than what the loud, obnoxious, arrogant cover of his showed. Besides, she had to admit he had been somewhat less loud, obnoxious and arrogant that year. But that didn’t mean that she wanted him to find her in a situation like this.

“You don’t?” she feigned surprise and folded her arms over her chest.

James shook his head, his expression serious. “No, I really don’t. I know that I can be a piece of shit at times but I’m not completely heartless, you know.”

“That’s news to me,” Lily grumbled because there was no other way to take her anger out at that moment, but luckily to her James didn’t seem to be in a mood for a fight and he just ignored all of her jabs.

James’s hand found his hair again and he sighed. “Look… can we try to be civil for a moment? As much as I enjoy occasional bickering, I think there’s a time and place for that and now’s not one of those times, clearly.”

“Fine.” Lily said with defeat, just hoping the boy would leave soon so she could continue dwelling on her issues on her own. James, however, didn’t seem to be able to read her thoughts, because instead of walking away, he got closer.

“Can I sit down?” he asked, uncharacteristically hesitantly.

She just shrugged. “Suit yourself. It’s a free world. I can’t exactly tell a Quidditch captain to leave the Quidditch pitch.”

“Well, technically you could, since you are a prefect and I’m not, and it’s past curfew,” James pointed out.

“You want me to take points from you and tell you to leave?” Lily raised her eyebrow.

“I would rather you didn’t do that but it’s your call. However, even if you did take points from me, that wouldn’t make a huge difference because I’m not planning to leave, at least not before talking with you.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because you were crying here on your own and I don’t like seeing you that way,” James stated as if it should have been obvious. This quieted Lily down quite effectively. What he had just said seemed so weirdly nice for James Potter she wasn’t sure what to think of it.

“You don’t like…” she repeated.

“Seeing you that way. Yeah. What, is that yet another surprise to you?” He cocked his eyebrow. “I thought that we were… I’m not sure if friends is the right word for it, but at least friendly? And I care about my friends.”

“Right. Sorry.” Lily said. James Potter may have had his flaws but she knew that he was fiercely loyal and protective towards his friends. He remained extremely tight-lipped about Remus Lupin’s secret (a secret Lily had figured out the previous year), and somehow he and his friends seemed to even have found a way to spend time with Remus during full moons, if their tired faces the morning after were anything to go by. Apparently James had even saved Severus Snape from an encounter with Lupin’s werewolf form, though how that had happened, Lily had no idea.

“So…” James attempted to catch her attention again. “I’m probably overstepping some boundaries when I’m asking this, but… do you want to talk about it? About what’s upsetting you?”

“Not really,” she said.

James thankfully wasn’t trying to push her. “Alright, fair enough.”

A silence fell between the two of them, but even as it got longer, James made no effort to move from his seat. Apparently he did not want to leave her alone in that mood. Something about that gesture sparked a little flame of hope in her heart.

“It’s… it’s a lot of things.” she finally spoke. “I doubt you’d want to hear me ranting about my issues for an hour straight.”

“Try me.”

James’ eyes looked fierce and determined with the moonlight reflecting from his glasses. It was enough for Lily to take down the dam she had been building inside her for weeks.

“Okay. Brace yourself.”

She looked up at the night sky, wishing the stars would somehow tell her what to say.

“Sometimes… sometimes I feel that no matter how hard I try… I’m never enough. Never a good enough sister. Or a daughter. Or a friend. Or a girlfriend. Never a good enough member of this goddamn society.”

She didn’t know what James had been expecting but clearly not this.

“Why… why would you say that?” he asked, his eyes wide.

She let out a humorless chuckle. “Oh boy, where do I begin? My sister hates me. Truth to be told, I think she has hated me ever since Sev… er, ever since I found out I was a witch, and she wasn’t. I’ve been trying my best to be nice to her, write letters to her every week, send her some of Honeydukes’ best sweets and the funniest Zonko’s products… And she takes that as me boasting about my new, ‘wonderful’ life. Last week, she sent me a letter saying it would be better if I just stopped contacting her. Her reasoning was, ‘what would my new neighbors think if I had owls flying near our house in daylight? What would my boyfriend think?’ She has made her message perfectly clear… she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore.”

“In that case she’s out of her mind and doesn’t know what she’s missing.” James said quietly. Before Lily had time to react to that statement, he continued: “What about your parents? Don’t they try to get some sense into her or something?”

Lily shook her head. “My parents… they are trying to be supportive but I don’t think they really understand Petunia’s resentment or what it’s like to be a Muggle-born in the wizarding world. I can’t talk to them about that stuff; they would instantly get me out of this school if they knew half of what’s been going on lately. And sometimes I think that even though they say they’re proud of me, they actually wish I would be a normal girl in a normal school. It’s asking a lot from them, having to come up with excuses and fake stories about where I am most of the year. I’m not even sure all their friends know that they have two daughters and not just one. The worst part is…” Lily felt her voice crack a bit, “I can’t really even blame them for that.”

James didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Lily could see countless different emotions from shock to outrage flash on his face as he processed her words.

“I’ve seen your parents; I know it’s probably hard to imagine for you that not all the parents are like that,” Lily added, thinking about how happy the Potter family always seemed when they hugged each other during a reunion at Platform 9 3/4. Her statement snapped James out of his daze.

“No! No! Trust me, I know I’m an extremely lucky bloke to have a family like that. But I’ve seen the other side too… Sirius… Er, he was disowned by his family last year and he has been living with us ever since. What I’ve heard from him about the other Blacks… they are not the kind of people you want as your relatives, to put it lightly. So let’s just say: I can imagine.”

That piece of news did come as a surprise to Lily. Sure, she was aware that Sirius was probably not close with his family; she had never once during the nearly five years his little brother had been at Hogwarts seen the brothers talk, nor did Sirius get letters from home like most of the pure-blood kids in the Slytherin table did. But she hadn’t known about him being disowned.

“Why was he disowned? If that’s something you can share.” She couldn’t hide her curiosity.

“Well, it’s not really a secret that he doesn’t share his family’s views on blood purity. To give you an idea of what they are like, Bellatrix Lestrange, who is allegedly one of You-Know-Who’s biggest supporters, is his cousin. When Sirius made his stance clear, it… got pretty ugly. To give you some less gory details, his lovely mother burned this name off the family tree and told him there was no coming back.” He mimicked blowing up something with his wand. “I should probably mention, if this was still unclear to you, that I fully agree with Sirius. My parents have always been avid supporters of Muggle-born rights and my mother dear would disown me if I didn’t follow in their footsteps, but I promise you, I would want to do it regardless. In case you’re wondering, no, my family is not very high on the popularity list among the pure-bloods currently…”

Lily just stared at him for a while. For some reason, she had never considered James Potter as a potential ally.

“Why have you never mentioned this before? I’ve always assumed… I don’t know, the way you carry yourself like you’re the king of the world… I’ve always wondered why you don’t get along with Slytherins even though you are a pure blood prince like them… Guess this explains some of it.”

“Some of it, yeah,” James admitted. ”A lot of them are gits in more than one way, though.”

“Doesn’t give you a right to hex them whenever you feel like it,” Lily said sharply, still remembering a very specific day by the lake about a year earlier all too clearly.

“Maybe not, but it’s not like they wouldn’t hex you back…” He seemed to decide it would be better to change his approach. “Um, anyway. I know I’ve been a git too and I’m not going to make more excuses for my past behavior.”

“Good.”

They were quiet for a moment. Lily was still processing the things James had just told her when he spoke again: “Er, I feel like I may be prodding a wasp nest here, but does the ‘not a good enough friend’ part have something to do with a certain Slytherin?”

Lily winced. “Sometimes you’re too observant for your own good. But I guess there’s no point in lying… There are moments when I wonder: could I have done something differently? Could I have stopped him from… doing the things he’s done?”

James looked at her darkly. “I don’t think you could have. He’s responsible for his own choices, remember. But since we’re being honest here… I feel responsible too. He may not have called you that if I hadn’t provoked him and acted like an idiot…”

Lily considered this for a moment. “Maybe not but there was more to our drifting apart than one slur. It had probably been coming for a while. We… we were arguing a lot during our last year of friendship and he was inventing these suspicious spells and hanging out with people who don’t hide their interest in becoming Death Eaters... My dorm mates always kept asking me why I still spent time with him even though I knew what he was like… Maybe I didn’t really want to believe it. Not before he called me a Mudblood in front of all those people.”

James shot her a warning glare. “Please don’t use that word.”

“Why not?” Lily exclaimed, the frustration taking over even though she tried her best to stay calm. “Mudblood and proud! I’m not afraid of a word, Potter. I’m afraid of people who are trying their hardest to take my future away from me and wanting me dead, regardless of what they call me. You’ve never had to be afraid for your life so you wouldn’t understand. You don’t know what it feels like to not belong anywhere.” She had to blink hard to keep more tears from spilling from her eyes.

James opened his mouth in an attempt to say something and closed it again. He moved his hand a little closer to her, but when Lily thought he would touch her arm, he seemed to decide against it. “You’re right. I don’t know what that feels like. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care, or that I’m just planning to stand in the sidelines while you struggle, Lily.” She didn’t miss the fact he used her first name. Something about the softness of his voice when he said her name… it made her feel a tiny bit lighter, somehow. “This is about our entire wizarding community, and I want to do whatever it takes to make things better. For you. And all of us.” His eyes were dead serious, telling Lily that he meant every word he said.

“I thought you were planning to become a Quidditch player or something,” she admitted, only now realizing how little she actually knew about James Potter. The boy ruffling his hair constantly and grinning like an idiot at a joke he himself had told was so different from the one who was currently sitting next to her.

“Maybe if things were a bit different…” he admitted. “But it’s not the only thing I would like to do. Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to be an auror or a healer… McGonagall has been trying to encourage me to do more Transfiguration research after finishing Hogwarts. I wrote an article on Gamp’s law once and it was published in Transfiguration Today.” He seemed almost ashamed to admit that. “But I dunno. It’s an interesting field but I’m not sure I can picture myself sitting behind a desk with dusty papers all day long, for years.”

Lily too tried to imagine him doing that and she had to admit it was quite difficult.

“How do you do that?” she finally asked. “I mean, make everything seem so effortless? You get Outstandings in pretty much everything – I’m only better than you in Potions – and you’re a great Quidditch player – oh come on, don’t look so smug, I only state the truth – and you are a natural with people – when you’re not hexing them… How?”

“First of all, Evans, I’m flattered you’ve paid attention to all that stuff,” he flashed a grin, having apparently decided it was safe to tease her a bit now that she was no longer looking like she would blow up any second. “More seriously speaking, though, I don’t think it’s really all as effortless as you seem to think it is. I’m good at Quidditch because I’ve had a broom probably since I was one year old and my dad taught me to fly. I fly countless hours, during and outside practices. And you may not believe this, but I actually do study behind the scenes. Sometimes. Whenever there isn’t important marauding to do.” Lily rolled her eyes. “Relax, I’m just trying to lighten the mood a little. But you can ask my mum, I do actually read every once in a while.”

“Of course your mum would say that,” Lily pointed out but her tone was softer than it had been earlier. “She’s mandated to do that.”

“Maybe,” James shrugged. “But trust me when I say that Sirius is the one who just swallows information the moment he sees it… I need to do more work than that.”

Lily considered her next words for a moment. “This might be too personal a question, but if we ignore Potions and other school things, what is something you struggle with? If you want to share.”

The smile that James had been sporting a moment earlier faded. “Well… my parents aren’t exactly young anymore and my dad has been pretty ill lately. I try to ask about him from my mum but she usually just brushes it off with a ‘don’t you worry about it, you have enough to worry about at Hogwarts’. Never the full truth. I could hear them talking during the Christmas holidays and it sounded like the healers are not… they’re not very optimistic about his recovery. I don’t know. Every time I leave home, I’m afraid it’s the last time I see him…”

For a moment Lily felt a sudden urge to take his hand into hers and squeeze it. She could tell that James’ father was important to him and he was quite close to tearing up as he talked about him.

“I’m sorry, James.”

“Thanks. It is what it is. I’m not telling this to get your pity, though… I’m just saying that things are rarely quite as black and white as they may seem at first. I guess… that’s something I’ve slowly started learning this past year. Funnily enough, I think it was you who opened my eyes to see that.”

When she didn’t say anything, he added hesitantly: “There’s something else too that I’ve been thinking about.”

“Mmmh? Go ahead.”

“When you called me an arrogant, bullying toerag and all those other things last year… Did you mean it?”

Lily’s eyes widened. “You still think about that?”

“Sometimes, yeah…” he admitted a bit bashfully, his hand finding the back of his neck.

“Uh… Well, honest answer: if you would have asked me this time last year, I would have said yes. I did mean it. But this year… I’ve learned that there might be more to James Potter than the arrogant toerag that I saw last year.”

James laughed, a genuine laugh that somehow made her feel better too. “Gee, thanks, Evans. That’s good to know.”

“I don’t want to give you too much hope because I know how you get when you’re too proud of yourself…” She bumped her knee against his. “But let’s just say that you may be going in the right direction.”

“Alright, that’s fair enough,” he chuckled, his knee now touching hers. “Er, sorry, this conversation took a weird turn… I didn’t mean to make it all about me, I swear…”

“It’s fine,” Lily said and she meant it. “I asked you. It felt weirdly comforting to hear about someone else’s issues. Sometimes… Sometimes I withdraw into my shell and forget that I’m not actually alone with all this.”

Unlike Lily earlier, James didn’t hesitate. He rested his hand on top of hers and looked into her eyes when he said: “You’re not, Lily. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye but I want you to know that I’m here. To listen. If you ever feel alone or just want to rant or whatever…”

Warmth spread throughout Lily’s entire body, and she wasn’t sure if it was the hand or his words (or maybe both) that did it.

“Thank you, James. It really, really means a lot to me.”

Then she did something that surprised even herself: she kissed him on the cheek.

“You’re… you’re welcome,” James stuttered when Lily pulled away, his hand going to rub the spot she had just kissed.

Lily attempted to pull her cloak a bit closer to her body to hide her sudden flustering.

“It’s getting a bit cold…” she said. “I should probably go back inside. But it was good talking to you. Really. Felt nice to get some of that stuff off my chest.”

“I’m glad I could help.” James gave her a small, almost shy smile. Lily simply nodded and was almost out of hearing distance when James yelled: “Hey, Evans!”

He had gotten up from his seat and was now approaching her.

“Yeah?”

“Can I walk with you?”

“Sure. I don’t see why not.”

He caught up with her and spent the walk to the Gryffindor Tower talking about whatever came to his mind, but Lily found herself enjoying it. For the first time in months, she didn’t feel alone.

#jily #james potter #lily evans #jple #marauders #jily fic #my fics

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