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She wasn’t his.
That was the one thing that had always been true, as long as he’d known her, as long as he’d known the man she was marrying today. She wasn’t his.
“I do,” Lily Evans said with an earth shattering smile, soon to be Lily Potter, and all he could think as his mind ran over and over everything that had happened in his life, all the ways he could have found himself standing here -worse STANDING UP- in love with a woman who was binding her life to another man was that she’d never, ever been his.
She wasn’t his when he’d been hexed in 2nd year and she’d found him sniffing (crying, if he felt like being honest with himself.) Lily Evans with her too bright hair and her too broad smile had found him nursing a wound that he didn’t want the others to see, didn’t want his friends to see, and she had paused. She had stalled in between the shelves that no one was supposed to find him in, in the back of a nearly empty library, and had simply looked at him, chewing on her lip as he willed her to disappear, go away, GO AWAY, don’t look-
“Episkey,” she had whispered, closing up the damage of the cutting hex and walking away without a word.
He may have loved her then, in the way young boys are wont to do, with sticky sweetness and confusion. He may have loved her for FEELING sympathy but not forcing him to live it, for fixing it without smothering him in concern, for letting him be and letting him lick his wounds.
It was allowed, too, even if he didn’t say it out loud when he watched her dance through snowflakes in 3rd year on a Hogsmeade visit with Marlene McKinnon. It was okay to love her a little bit in 4th year when Lily, so painfully adept at charms it made his heart stutter, had seen him struggling in the corner of the common room with the charm to make his plain, grey scarf GRYFINDOR red (not blood red and not orange-red, but that special shade of maroon) because Merlin knew he was never going to get one that color sent to him and she flipped her wand and just like that he had it. He had her, really, a little bit of her wrapped around him and no one else knew because she’d just done it and walked away, walked on.
She still WASN’T HIS, but the scarf was, and it made sense even then that maybe he’d only have pieces of her, with her too bright hair and her too broad smile. He didn’t even know what wanting was at 14 and still very much a child, but he knew he wanted what he couldn’t, shouldn’t have. Not yet, anyway.
He was sixteen years old and cold all the way down to his bones, scared and hiding it with every ounce of comportment he had, when the official notice of how very, very disappointing he was came in the form of fists and jinxes and blood. He was drowning, dying in his unease and despair, putting on the best of shows for his friends when Lily sat beside him at the House table for breakfast and grabbed his hand where no one could see, squeezing him for minutes on end in support before offering him the smallest of smiles and leaving as if nothing had ever happened.
She was too good for him, too pure for him, but he kind of, sort of loved her. If he even knew what it was, which he wasn’t sure he did, but if love would ever exist for him, it’d be in the form of Lily Evans.
Suddenly, though, he wasn’t the only one.
“I’m gonna marry her one day,” James Potter announced on a cold winter’s day in 6th year and he had had to laugh, because truly, that was never to be. Lily HATED James. She wasn’t all that fond of him either, at least not when he wasn’t broken and looking like a kicked puppy as she seemed to find him more than anyone ever had or would, but maybe he could change that. Maybe he’d be good enough, wise enough, strong enough one day to approach her, ask her for a bit of time. And James, surely, would move on soon. They were alike in that, always finding a new girl to chase, a new conquest to conquer.
James didn’t move on, though, and suddenly (and it was very much like watching ice shatter or paper burn to ash or the light fade into darkness) Lily Evans didn’t hate James Potter anymore. It was 7th year and now James and Lily were talking, and then dating, and then in love.
All at once, there was a ring on her finger from the Potter vaults and she looked at James like he was the stars and the moon and the entire night sky, really, if he was being honest and it-
It wasn’t okay to love her anymore. Because she wasn’t his. And she never had been.
Didn’t stop him though.
The reception was lovely, everything Euphemia Potter planned always was anyway, and if he got positively roaring drunk so he could stand the sight of Lily and James Potter dancing together and looking at one another with eyes shining in adoration and intimacy and not choke, well, no one could blame him. No one could if they knew, anyway; which they didn’t.
“Mind if I cut in?” He said with a smile; a wide, fake smile that split his face almost, almost as much as his heart split and James smiled back, warmly, clapped him on the shoulder and then-
The woman who was not his –NOT HIS- was in his arms and twirling around the dance floor, if only for a moment.
“You look stunning, Mrs. Potter,” he told her, because he knew Lily loved to hear it now, loved to be ‘Mrs. Potter.’ He watched the long line of her throat as she threw her head back and laughed and laughed, free and beautiful and thrilled at how life stretched out ahead of her.
Lily Potter –Not his, NOT HIS- brushed her lips across his cheekbone and pressed her body to his chest, squeezing his ribs with warmth and joy while his heart glowed and withered inside his chest concurrently.
“Thank you, Sirius,” she murmured as he spun her deftly around the room. “You’re looking rather dashing yourself.”
“Anytime, Lils,” he choked.
Not his, but...
‘At least she’ll be happy,’ Sirius thought, enjoying his stolen moment before his best friend claimed what was rightfully his. Perhaps that was the worst part, that he couldn’t even be jealous or spiteful. Because he loved James, his brother in all but name, and he couldn’t begrudge him anything. Not even her.
‘At least she’ll be happy,’ he thought once more as he watched them disapparate away at the end of the night; Lily with her too bright hair and her too broad smile and James with his crooked grin and more crooked glasses.
‘They’ll be happy,’ Sirius promised himself as they left to their new home in Godric’s Hollow.