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You're a song written by the hands of God
Don't get me wrong 'cause this might sound to you a bit odd
But you own the place where all my thoughts go hiding
Right under your clothes, is where I find them
Underneath your clothes
There's an endless story
There's the man I chose
There's my territory
And all the things I deserve
Shakira - Underneath Your Clothes
Midwinternight Magic
Green eyes stare into the night.
Snow, fallen for days, has hidden the world under a thick white blanket, transforming the forest into a place that looks to be out of a Fairy tale, from an old myth about a secret Forest no one ever set foot in.
There is comfort in this feeling of being somewhere unreal, some place Magical, and she wonders how the stillness and white silence around her feel like another blanket, one that dulls her pain. How she does not know, but in this pristine white world it's harder to feel alone, she feels a fraction less heartbroken.
“Have you gone where I can’t follow?” she whispers to the trees. They stay silent.
Her last letter to James, the one that her owl returned unopened weeks after she sent it, is in her hand. She sent other letters, not often, but one for his birthday, one in the summer because she had simply missed him too much and this last one, the day after Hallow's Eve when the world had changed.
She keeps it, to read the words he will never read, her confessions he will not get to see. The ink is blotched from where her tears have fallen onto the parchment.
“You said you would never leave me, but you lied, you did leave me. And now the war is over and you are you not here, ” she says to silence around her.
One day in early spring he had still been in her life, then the next day he was gone. She had felt his kiss on her head, she had still been half-asleep, then she had heard his whisper, as if he had been thinking out loud. “ So that’s how it feels, our last kiss…Goodbye, love.”
She had not fully woken, had not understood his intentions, his decision. Things had clicked once it was too late to stop him from leaving her behind; when she discovered he had taken a bag full of clothes along with his invisibility cloak, and heard his friends had disappeared in similar fashion on the same day.
A promise, made in the innocence of youth, when they had no idea about the reality of a war that would swallow up their world. Still, a promise was a promise and it was the reason she held on to hope; that one day, when whatever they had set out to do, was done, he would return to her.
Hope that it hadn’t been their last kiss.
When she was angry, she would tell herself it couldn’t be, for it wasn’t their kiss, she had only been kissed.
On other days she’d been too sad to argue with herself and her lonely reality.
Whispers, like white puffs of winter breaths, began to tell of significant blows to Voldemort and his army of Death Eaters. Was that James’s doing?
Everyone she knew was doing their part; but would it ever be enough?
Tatters of fate, murmurs, rumours, hearsay and poorly phrased prophecies filled the heads and hearts of the people around her. And then, something had changed overnight, she had not been told what exactly, but there was a tension palpable within the Order’s headquarters, something big had happened.
And on that Hallow’s Eve, Dumbledore himself challenged Voldemort to a duel to the death, in a place called Godric’s Hollow.
The Dark Lord had accepted. Lily had heard the stories, he'd reacted as if the idea of death was laughable to him.
Hubris, it turned out to be.
Like icarus flying too close to the sun, the Dark Lord had flown so high that he never saw what happened on the ground.
She heard how Dumbledore had merely smiled. Unlike when he fought and defeated Grindlewald, this time, it was said, he never raised his wand.
He held up his hand, where his fingers should have been it was told there were only blackened stumps. Voldemort had taunted him, goading him into a response, but when Dumbledore merely shrugged and shook his head in pity, the Dark Lord had cast the green spell of death in a flash of rage.
No one, save perhaps Dumbledore, had expected what had happened next. The green spell killed Dumbledore but deflected and on its rebound hit Voldemort square in the chest. The Dark Lord, for all his might, died just like any other man, muggle and wizard alike.
The outcome of the duel meant chaos until the Ministry took control, and the wizarding world could finally start to grieve its losses properly.
Lily grieved for lost friends, still she retained some hope, that not all losses would prove permanent.
She had looked for days, weeks, wishing a mop of wild dark hair, dancing hazel eyes behind a pair of glasses, to appear from a crowd, to show up on her doorstep, to grab her and hold her close, but despite her stubbornly clinging to the last shards of hope, nothing.
No Remus, no Sirius, no Peter, and worst of all, no James returned to her life. She couldn’t even ask Dumbledore where he had sent them; if he had sent them…not that he’d ever answered her questions about James and his friends before.
So as the nights grow longer and the days colder, it gets more and more difficult to ignore the fact none of the so-called Marauders have returned after Voldemort’s defeat.
She still helps to heal what can be healed, fixes what can be fixed. For sleep comes to her only when she’s exhausted. But one thing she can’t mend.
Her own heart remains in ruins.
Her eyes grow dim and dull, still searching, but she has to admit to herself she is losing hope, a little more with each day that passes.
Without hope her mind latches onto the bleakness of winter; the world around her transforms into a bare and still land, as lifeless as she feels inside and somehow that’s less painful than living without him in a world that’s brimming with spring blossoms, sated with ripe summer fruits or wild autumn winds to whip at her hair and tug at her coat.
This, a frozen, still world, where things hide away from bitter cold, this she can handle.
She dreads the upcoming celebrations, another Christmas without him to help her fill the tree, another New Year's Eve without his kiss to welcome the new Year?
How does she start anew? How do you lay your love to rest in peace, if you didn’t get to kiss them that last time? How to bury someone when the ground is frozen solid?
A story, more like myth, about Midwinternight, the longest night of the year, has brought her here. Some nights, like Hallow’s Eve, Summer solstice and Midwinter, are told to be different. On those nights, Magic flows freely and the divide between worlds is frail, like very thin ice.
She holds the letter that came back unopened. It is her goodbye to him, her story of them, and tonight she will let it go. She will burn it and once there’s nothing but ashes left of her love, she can mourn.
And hopefully, one day, someday, she can learn to love again.
It’s not hard to make fire with magic, but her eyes are blurry and something holds her back. It doesn’t feel right.
Lily knows that’s stupid, no waiting will change a thing and this will never feel right. All she’s doing is risking she’ll become so cold that she will freeze out here, no Midwinter Magic would prevent that.
The idea shouldn’t be as appealing as it is.
Just when she lifts her wand to light the fire something moves in the corner of her eye, between dark tree trunks she sees a flash of silver. She blinks. Nothing.
Her hands unfold the letter, her eyes watch the words, read their story, the feelings and thoughts she only ever wants to share with him. She wishes for their story to be endless, for the words between them to keep flowing, for the thoughts he took with him to return. She shivers, instead of warming her, thinking of James leaves her frozen, like the earth, cold, stuck, lifeless.
Come back to me, please.
When she looks up, there’s no longer nothing. Her eyes make out the image of a silver stag standing proud and tall between the trees.
She tries to silence herself with her hand on her mouth, but for once she loses the tight hold on control. She cries out, her body shakes from her sobs.
How she wishes to see his Stag Patronus, how she longs to hear his voice, even if it is just one more time.
One final kiss, not one stolen while she was asleep.
Snow crunches under hooves. Blinking furiously she looks up. The stag, a majestic animal steps forward, a clear king of the forest. It’s not silver like a Patronus and its breaths form white clouds, this stag is real.
Broad antlers catch the moonlight and its eyes are bright. She stills again, her tears dry and she just watches. The sight makes her heart slam against her ribs so hard that it hurts.
Without thinking she stands, her feet move forward of their own accord, just like her fingers stretch out slowly towards the stag. When she does think again she wonders why it’s not running away from her?
Maybe this night is Magic. Maybe tonight the veil is thin enough to send a message across and she is meant to let go.
The stag comes closer and she feels as if she’s looking down on herself, watching how her hand reaches even further until she strokes the nuzzle of the wild animal. She notes it doesn’t even flinch when she touches it.
“You’re not scared of me,” she says, hardly more than a breath. “I’m not scared of you, either. You remind me of someone I lost. Someone I love.”
The calm breaths of the animal seem to stutter at the sound of her voice. She closes her eyes for a second, bracing herself for the animal to come to its senses and realise she’s human and make a run for it. She hopes she won’t be trampled in its flight.
Lily
It’s as if she can hear his voice, so clear, she has never dreamt something that feels this real and right now it doesn't feel like she's even asleep.
The animal's fur feels warm under her hand, when she loses its touch, the loss of warmth is enough to make her shiver.
“Lily, I’m back,” the voice says and she smiles, for what kind of crazy dream is this?
She keeps her eyes closed when warm hands touch her, hold her, press her against a firm familiar chest. When she breathes in deeply, she smells pine, the scent of fresh wet earth, a hint of spice, that's just so him.
“I’m back, it’s over. You can open your eyes now, love. I won’t disappear again.”
She hears his voice, she smells him, she can feel him against her but she keeps her eyes firmly closed. She presses her face harder against the planes of his chest, not daring to believe he’s anything but imaginary, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears in check.
Only when she feels his fingers run through her hair, hears him chuckle when she buries herself even deeper into his body, does she at last dare look.
Hazel eyes behind square glasses - it is him - gaze at her with a hunger that she's missed for more than a year. It stirs something deep inside of her; no longer cold, empty, stuck. Instead, a sprightly sensation, of something shifting, unfreezing. Alive.
How, she does not know, nor does she care. Much.
Let there be magic, if only tonight, flashes through her mind as she moves to kiss the love of her life.