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Autumn, 1976
Lilies bloomed in spring, but autumn was the superior month as far as Lily Evans was concerned. Autumn was the amber-leafed branch between too-hot summer and too-drab winter. It was a perfect medium that ushered in the beginning of a new school year and burnt the slopes of the Scottish countryside crimson and auburn.
After a quiet and sultry summer, the castle hummed like an organ in the belly of the highlands once more. The shorter days had pushed the sun from its reign, and the hazy spell of summer had lifted: the people of Hogsmeade filtered into the streets once more, huddling in pubs and stirring brews of clover and cinnamon.
So yes, Lily loved autumn. She tucked these happy observations firmly between the beats of her heart and protected them fiercely from teasing. Teasing, it just so happened, was another word for James Potter.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that one James Potter, in possession of a winning smile and a good fortune, knew Lily Evans. He knew what she liked, what she disliked, and what she pretended not to like better than he knew left from right. James never failed to remind her that she liked cats, or that she hated burnt toast, or that she secretly liked it when he called her ‘Lils’. Mary called it ‘creepy’, and Marlene called it ‘impressive’. Lily called it annoying and blamed that nippy easterly wind for the red that seemed to creep over her cheeks.
The teasing came as she stomped up the cobbled path of High Street. “Lils! Come to see the autumn festivities?”
Of course. James knows I like autumn. He probably knew I liked autumn before I even knew I liked autumn, Lily thought darkly, for that was just the kind of person James was.
“I’m sorry to say it though, Lils, but there’s something about summer that really brings out the green in your eyes!”
She kept walking. James and his friends lounged lazily on the steps of Zonkos like kings. Or maybe more like gargoyles. All four of them beamed at her as she passed. Idiots.
“You sap, Potter, how would you know what her eyes look like in summer?”
“Ah, but you see Pete, they spent a lot of time together this summer,” said Remus Lupin slyly.
Lily, cheeks burning and all caution thrown to the traitorous easterly wind, spun around to face them. James, seated in the middle of the smirking gargoyles, gaped at her from his throne. A firework hissed somewhere from within Zonkos and exploded with the force of a small missile. The windows of the shop flared with light; the cheers of students slipped out into the crisp air. James had now taken to soundlessly opening and closing his mouth like a fish as his friends chortled. Lily sorely wished that the firework had been a missile, but at least James had the good sense to look scared.
“Yeah, when was that Moony?” asked Sirius indulgently.
Remus sighed. “In Potter’s Midsummer Night Dreams.”
“Oh, Lupin, you nerd!” Peter Pettigrew moaned, “I thought you were being serious!”
It was Sirius’s turn to sigh dramatically. “Only you would think he was being serious, Pete; no offense Potter.”
“None taken,” James said numbly, still staring at Lily. Were his cheeks a little pink? Lily would rather not think about it.
Lily turned away just as the three other boys had taken to shaking James by his shoulders and ruffling his hair with chants of “love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind!” and “ill met by moonlight poor James Potter!”
“Love looks- AH!” By the sounds of it, someone had just let a firecracker slip past the shop’s door. By the smell of it, the top of Sirius’s head was probably singed.
Lily took the steps of the Healers Nook two at a time, unnoticed by James and Peter, who were now swatting the top of Sirius’s sizzling head with their gloves, and Remus, who was now laughing and cradling Sirius’s whining head in his hands.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
“Mary?” Lily peered through the crack of the bathroom door.
“Yeah, Lil?” Mary Macdonald answered from her bed where she was on her stomach flipping through the newest copy of Witch Weekly. The blonde witch on the cover winked at Lily, and she swallowed thickly.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake, Mary.”
“Have you now, Lil?” Mary murmured distractedly, flipping the magazine lengthways to better inspect Myron Wagtail’s abs. Marlene McKinnon, who had been balancing sugar quills on the flats of Mary’s raised feet, peered over her shoulder.
“Hey! that folds out as a poster, Lily – no, not you, Lily – I mean, Lily Clearwater said- “
Mary scoffed “Ugh! Lily Clearwater is a- “
“She said that if you stick the poster to your wall, Wagtail will sing you a song every once in a while.”
Mary hummed, bit her lip, and set to work trying to tear the moving poster from the magazine.
“Oh no, don’t you do it! The Weird Sisters have never really done it for me,” Marlene groaned, but Mary, who was clearly intent on being serenaded, wasn’t listening.
“Mary, I mean it,” Lily tried again.
“Oh no Lil.” Marlene looked up at her with wide eyes as Mary held the length of the poster up like a trophy. “Did you forget the potion essay?”
“No!” Lily cried, exasperated.
Then came the loud rippling of paper, and Mary’s face appeared from behind the crumpled poster of Wagtail-what’s-his-name. “Oh no, I forgot about the potions essay.”
“I’m-“ Lily started, swallowed, and tried again. “I’ve taken three tests from the Healers Nook! Three! They all came back positive! Well actually, I think the first one looks more like a division sign than a plus sign but…” She looked at her friends desperately, praying that they understood. How could she ever say it plainly? The hour that she had spent sitting on the bathroom floor had taught her one thing: that no matter which way she tested the truth on her tongue, it always felt foreign and misshapen in her throat.
“Lil, have you got dragonpox?!” Mary shrieked, and Wagtail jumped and leapt out of the frame of the poster.
How did people usually say this? I’m going to be a mum? I’m with child? I’m expecting an addition to the family? But ha! there’s no family, it’s just me, and I’m…
“I’m pregnant!” Lily didn’t know when she had started crying but hot tears streamed down her face as the room lapsed into silence.
Marlene looked at Mary, and Mary looked at Marlene, and a beat passed before the two girls launched for Lily in a commotion of sugar quills and magazine pages.
“Are you sure it’s not a food baby?” Marlene asked into Lily’s hair. Lily pushed her face into the crook of Mary’s neck and sobbed.
“How did you even generate enough pee for three pregnancy tests,” Mary sobbed back. “You’re amazing.”
“I drank like ten tonnes of gillyweed. It’s real.” In fact, she had drunk so much gillyweed that Rosemurta had cut her off at the same time that Hagrid had fallen asleep in his twentieth mug of mead.
“What are you going to do?” Mary whispered and squeezed Lily tighter.
“I don’t know.”
“Can I ask the obvious question?” Marlene asked.
Lily simply sobbed, choked on her sob, and continued to sob. That was answer enough for Mary and Marlene, who lifted their heads and gaped at each other.
“Lil…”
“I’m so stupid.”
“When?”
Lily thought of honey-coloured fields and fresh linen and the ripe, swollen fruit that hung heavy on the branches of Potter Manor. “Summer”. Oh, how she hated summer.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
Only masochists trained at six o’clock in the morning. But, Lily supposed, walking all the way done to the pitch with a churning stomach and a pregnancy test in her pocket at six o’clock in the morning wasn’t exactly normal either.
“Oh, my Potter, your robes are especially red today,” Lily greeted. The quidditch pitch was empty, save for the startled boy in front of her. The morning breeze carried citrus and fresh linen, and she breathed it in deeply.
James paused, looked down at his robes, and grinned. “My mum uses colour-safe washing potions,” he said proudly.
It was then that Lily realised that she was downstream of the breeze, and the smell of citrus and linen was in fact James, who was staring at her hopefully.
Lily buried her nose into her scarf. “Go Mrs Potter!” she cheered half-heartedly.
“I’ll tell her.” James’s smile was positively dazzling as he admired the colour of his quidditch robes.
Lily nodded, James nodded, and the conversation lapsed into silence.
“So, uh…”
“So”, Lily begun, “guess what?”
“What!” James asked eagerly.
“I’m pregnant.”
James’s smile was frozen on his face, and the breeze clawed at Lily, unleashing strands of her red hair from her scarf with icy fingers.
“Well, I was just thinking, you know…” She kept talking, she had to keep talking. “That I should just nip it in the bud before it gets worse cause…” Why was she still talking? James’s face was blanker than parchment. “You know what they say about pregnancy and how it can often lead to… an infant.”
Jamess snapped back to life. “Yeah… yeah, that is what they say,” he agreed diplomatically and then blinked. “Merlin’s beard.”
Lily couldn’t look at his face, so she spoke to his shoes instead. “So, you’re cool with that then?”
“Yeah, yeah, wicked – well, not wicked but – just… I guess do whatever you think you should do,” stuttered James’s shoes. Lily wanted to sink into her scarf and never come out.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
The door shut closed behind her, and Mary and Marlene leapt to their feet.
“Lil?...” Mary asked hesitantly.
“I…” Lily croaked, her head dropped and her hair caught in her tears. “Mum took me… and I…”
“Move your body like a hairy troll
Learn to rock and roll
Spin around like a crazy elf- “
“Oh, shut up!” Marlene howled and launched her pillow at Wagtail who ducked out of frame. “I’m sick of him Mary, he won’t stop singing!”
“I couldn’t do it.” Lily lifted her head to face her friends. “They said that it has fingernails.”
“Fingernails?”
“I freaked out, I couldn’t do it.”
“So, your… oh, Lil.”
Lily was swept up in Mary’s arms. “And there was a protester there and…” Lily sniffled, “she had a sign and…”
Marlene joined the hug.
“It said that all babies want to get borned,” Lily choked. “She couldn’t even” – hiccup - “spell born right! Why does she get to tell me what to do when” - gasp - “she couldn’t even spell ‘born’ right!?”
“So… your baby is going to be borned?” Mary asked, wide eyed.
Lily nodded, ignoring Marlene’s murmurs of “Fingernails? Really?” and Wagtail’s resumed melody about dancing hippogriffs.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
Monday slipped into Tuesday, which somehow leapt over Wednesday and became Thursday all too quickly. Oh, dreaded Thursday.
Lily had done a commendable job at avoiding Potter’s worried eyes. She’d done a spectacular job at ignoring his friends and their pleas to “put Potter out of his misery” and go out with him. She’d even managed to avoid Madam Pomfrey for most of the morning, who was hawk eyed and insistent that Lily take every potion under the sun.
“She wants me to take potions for my knee joints! and I don’t know how she keeps finding me but it’s getting ridiculous!” Lily wailed as she marched down to the dungeons with Mary and Marlene.
“Well, you know, with this baby being borned, your knee joints might be hurted, Lil,” Mary advised wisely.
“Put a sock in it.”
In truth, Madam Pomfrey and her myriad of potions were a welcomed comfort, and the sweets that she would buy for Lily made up for the worry of faulty knees and thinning hair.
When they reached the potions classroom, Sirius’s smirk was devilish, and Lily considered if surrendering herself to Madam Pomfrey’s fussing really was the better option.
“Evans! ready for that date? Just last night Mr Potter here was talking about you!” The guilt that had been festering in her chest nudged at her ribcage like a bird in a cage.
“Wouldn’t stop talking about you,” Peter added.
“I wanted to throttle him!” Sirius chirped, “But I thought if I knocked him out, he’d just miss you even more when he woke up.”
“How kind of you,” Lily nodded and turned her back on them. She instead busied herself with glaring at Mary’s and Marlene’s knowing looks to avoid looking at James, who was most definitely looking at her – Merlin, did everything have to be so complicated?
Things only got more complicated from there.
“Um, I did the homework questions last week so you can copy my notes,” Lily muttered. This time, in the stillness of the dungeons, she couldn’t blame the easterly wind for the blush that burnt her cheeks.
“I can copy your work?” James asked timidly.
Lily sighed. “James, you try to copy my work every week.”
“True. I’m kind of a deadbeat potion partner, aren’t I?” He tried to laugh, but it came out rather high-pitched and attracted the curious glances of Sirius and Peter at the next cauldron over.
Lily shook her head and furrowed her brow. “No, no… I think you definitely bring something to the table.”
“Charisma?”
Lily didn’t reply and found herself very interested in dicing the bitter root.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
When Lily entered the great hall for breakfast the next day, it was a battlefield. Water shot out of wands and students whooped and screamed as they scrambled under tables and leapt over seats. Of course, James was in the centre of it all, beaming like the king of a small country.
Sirius whipped past Lily, screeching as Remus pelted him with water. “EVANS HE’S GONE FERAL, SAVE ME!”
He was gone before Lily could even move, diving under the Ravenclaw table with Remus hot on his heels.
There were shouts of “AH MY EYE!” and “I’VE LOST MY WAND!” as people dashed madly room table to table, eager to retaliate against the onslaught of water. Friends turned on friends and fell dramatically when hit. Lily gaped as Barty Crouch Jr, who had a rather manic look in his eye, conjured a snake out of water and set it to chasing the wailing students.
James had never looked so happy. Even as he roared, “WHERE DID THAT SNAKE COME FROM?” from atop the Gryffindor table, he was smiling so wide that Lily felt her breath catch.
Someone stopped at the door beside her, and she tore her eyes away from James, who was now carrying a first year on his shoulders like a small water cannon.
Regulus Black met her wide eyes with equal shock. A beat passed before Regulus spoke. “Where’s Sirius?”
Lily wordlessly pointed to the Ravenclaw table, where Sirius was being held down by a thousand small first years as Remus splashed him with his wand. Regulus brushed past her.
“EVANS, TAKE ONE!” a voice hollered from behind her. It was Peter, who was red-faced and straining with the weight of a large tub of water balloons. “HERE, HERE.” Peter shoved three into her hands before he was consumed by a crowd of desperate students.
Lily stumbled into the great hall. “EVANS HELP ME!” A hand shot out and gripped her wrist, and suddenly she was being dragged behind Sirius. She threw a look over her shoulder at Remus, who was cackling. Behind Remus was Regulus, who looked extremely wet and murderous. Behind Regulus was a large group of first years who looked eager to help. “KEEP UP EVANS, THEY’RE GOING TO MURDER ME!”
Lily launched a water balloon behind her; it hurtled over Remus, and she heard Regulus shriek. Oh no.
“I’M SCARED OF REGULUS!” She wailed as her and Sirius meandered through the fighting students.
“LILS!” James laughed as Sirius pushed her up onto the Gryffindor table.
“JAMES TELL MOONY TO STOP TARGETTING ME,” Sirius cried as a jet of water hit him in the back of his head.
“HE JUST LOVES YOU!” James cheered, and Sirius was knocked off his feet by Crouch’s water snake.
“James!? Did you start this?!” Lily gasped for breath, she suddenly felt very shy under his attention.
James’s face lit up when his eyes fell on the water balloons. “Wicked! Hit me!”
“Hit you?!”
“Go on! I’ll try and catch it!”
Lily looked between the balloons and the radiant boy in front of her, took a step back, and took her aim. James raised his hands expectantly and suddenly; it didn’t matter that a stray spell had splashed her back or that a badger made of water had joined the battle and was now jumping from head-to-head. All that mattered was the boy in front of her who looked so alive and young and happy.
She launched the balloon, and the world froze as the balloon shot right past James’s outstretched hands and exploded in his face. “Oh!” She exclaimed as James reeled back and spluttered.
“James! are you ok?!" Lily clapped her hand over her mouth. James just cackled and bounded away to cause more havoc. Lily was laughing. When had she started laughing? The look on James’s face had been priceless. He was never going to catch the balloon; he wanted her to hit him because he wanted her to laugh.
“LIL!”
“MARY! DID YOU SEE? I HIT JAMES HA! IN THE FACE! HE- HE-” Her cheeks hurt, and she gasped for breath between her laughter. Mary and Marlene climbed on the table and began laughing too.
“WHAT ARE WE LAUGHING ABOUT?” Marlene chortled.
“I DON’T KNOW!” Mary cried, and Lily felt the overwhelming urge to hug her friends.
“GIRLS WATCH OUT!” A voice screeched from across the hall and Lily was moving before she could even register what was happening. She spun around, and the world seemed to move in slow motion.
This was what she saw:
Peter, Sirius, and… was that Evan Rosier? All red-faced and wide smiles.
A bin, sawing through the air and sloshing with water.
The wide eyes of Regulus Black, who had stopped trying to drown Benjy Fenwick and stood with his mouth open.
“ARGH!!” Someone wailed. A small tsunami had breached Hogwarts. Water crashed down over their heads, and she stood frozen as people gasped and cheered.
“BIN WATER!” Someone cried, and the great hall exploded into chaos once more.
Lily searched for James. He was being swarmed by first years at the Slytherin table who were intent on splashing him as much as they could. His face glowed with the light of his smile as he wrestled with them three at a time.
James lived off of chaos and fun.
Lily’s chest tightened.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
“Lily? Can we talk?”
Remus.
“I’m studying,” Lily said. Remus glanced down at her empty parchment and back to her. She groaned. “Fine, what is it?”
Remus slid into the empty seat in front of her. “Are you going to tell James?”
Lily stilled. “What?”
“I can smell you,” Remus offered, as if this were all the explanation she needed.
“Excuse me?”
“You smell strange.”
“Excuse you?”
Now, Lily had always thought Remus was the most level-headed of them all, but as he waited patiently for her reply, she was having serious doubts.
“Am I going to tell James that I smell strange…?” Lily repeated, and Remus sighed.
“I’ll tell you my secret if you tell me yours.”
Lily had the terrible, dreadful suspicion that Remus, by some smelling miracle or another, knew. The buzz of the library was muffled, like the sound of a distant engine, as she searched the contours of Remus’s knowing face.
It had been two weeks since that small plus sign (that Lily remained adamant looked more like a division sign) had appeared. No matter how many times James caught her eye in the great hall and no matter how many nights she’d spent sounding out the shape of her confession into the dark, she couldn’t tell him.
Lily had performed every investigation she could think of to diagnose the source of her avoidance. The results were this: Lily bared all the symptoms of crushing, desperate fear.
Her fear ran loops in her mind, and she had become so intimately acquainted with the possibility of James leaving her that any other future seemed practically impossible.
However, in her calculations, she had never considered a confrontation quite like this. So, in a small voice, she asked, “Are you pregnant too, Lupin?”
Remus simply smiled. “You have to tell James.”
“How do you know it’s James’s?”
“Because its always James for you,” Remus said softly, and Lily’s head snapped up. “I see the way you look at him.”
Oh Remus. Stupid, sensible Remus with his big eyes and his ridiculous sweaters. Lily looked down at the parchment, but it reminded her too much of James’s blank face on the quidditch pitch, and her throat burnt with unshed tears.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”’
“What if he doesn’t want me anymore?”
“You underestimate how much you mean to him.”
She thought of James in the great hall. He had looked so young and carefree. His eyes had crinkled with laughter, and Lily couldn’t figure out why her stomach had plummeted at the sight of him.
“I told him that…” Oh no, was she crying again? “I was going to go to a clinic and… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be crying.”
Remus shook his head. “It’s ok to cry.” He leant forward and lay a hand on the desk between them. His palm lay open, not expectant, just waiting. Lily took it, and his long fingers wrapped around hers.
“It has fingernails. The Baby.”
Remus’s eyes widened. “Fingernails? Really?”
“And I was so selfish. I just couldn’t do it, I was so scared.”
“You’re not selfish, Lily. You can’t keep this from him.”
“I just… James is so fun. He’s infuriating, but he’s so kind, and… everyone loves him. Everybody agrees that he’s the funniest guy at Hogwarts…” Lily couldn’t look at Remus. “In the great hall he was running around and shooting out water at anyone, and he looked so alive and carefree. I just kept thinking… why me? I don’t think I’m fun enough for him, Remus. And now I’m… pregnant and… he’s so young…”
“You’re young too, Lily.”
“And everyone was laughing and pointing at him, and I just wanted to scream and say… I don’t know what I wanted to say. I just wanted everyone to know that we had spent the summer together.”
“He’s yours Lily, you just have to tell him that. He’ll drop everything for you.”
“Is it selfish to feel this way? Everyone else was having so much fun, but all I could think of was him and where he was and what he was doing and… and if he was looking at me.”
“No, I understand.”
“No, you don’t! You were chasing Sirius around like a madman! You have no problem being fun enough for him!”
Remus didn’t get it. He couldn’t get it. He was part of that elite circle of boys who wore their ties too loose and were the favourites of any professor. People loved them. People wanted to be them. She couldn’t be one of them.
Remus nodded thoughtfully and squeezed her hand.
“I’m a werewolf.”
His grip on her hand loosened, as if he expected her to pull away. “There are days when I can’t move. I can only sleep because it hurts too much to do anything else. I get scared that I’m too boring as well. But Sirius understands. James will understand too.”
Lily blinked. “Oh, Remus.”
Remus shook his head and placed her hand gently on the table. “By the way, did you make sure to shower after the bin incident?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“Good. The gits didn’t even bother to wash it before they filled it and only dropped it a couple dozen times on the way over.”
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
When Lily was ready, she knew where to find James.
“James? Wake up its twelve.”
The common room was a hazy landscape of fallen soldiers with empty bottles for shell casings and crumpled clothing for armour. The room was bathed in ribbons of midday light, carving paths across the evidence of the night before. In the fireplace, the last lick of a flame clung to a log, and the Gryffindor Quidditch banner hung still and limp above the scene. The windows were shut, and it was stiflingly humid.
On the couch, next to the blanketed form of a crumpled figure (wait, was that a curtain?), was James.
“Lils?” he groaned, straightening his glasses and squinting at her. “What time is it?”
“Twelve,” Lily repeated patiently. “Can we talk?”
James, who looked in no fit state to be talking to anyone, nevertheless sat up and nodded. Lily might have felt bad, but it was now or never. “Can we go somewhere? Your dorm if it’s empty?”
James looked at the staircase to the boy’s dormitories, scanned the floor for his roommates, cringed, and said, “looks like they all made it back. Let’s go to the lake.”
So, they made their way to the lake in silence. The castle was quiet; its only occupants were either the unlucky students who couldn’t go to Hogsmeade or the lucky students who were not currently passed out on the floor of Gryffindor tower.
They sank into the plush grass under a tree, and Lily tucked her knees to her chest while James muttered to himself. “The curtains… they took the curtains…”
“I’m keeping it.” Lily whispered and James froze. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated and folded her arms over her stomach.
“I thought you… already…”
When the silence became too silent and her dread began to drip like syrup down her spine, she peered up at James.
He was smiling. James was smiling.
“Ok,” he said simply and rested his back against the tree trunk, still smiling in that ridiculous, infuriating, beautiful James Potter way.
“You’re smiling. Why are you smiling?”
“No, I’m not,” James smiled, gazing out onto the lake.
“Yes you-”
James threw his arms around her and she melted. “Don’t be sorry. Never sorry.”
“Aren’t you mad?” Lily whispered into his shoulder.
“No. We’ll make it work.”
“I’m going to start looking like a pretty big dork soon.” She tightened her arms around his neck. “Are you still going to think I’m cute when I’m huge?”
James laughed. “I always think you’re cute. I think you’re beautiful.”
Lily pulled back to meet his eyes, but James had suddenly become very interested in wrapping a strand of her hair around his finger. She looked down at where their knees touched. “Jeez, Potter.”
“I do.”
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
Winter, 1976
“Did you hear Lily Evans is pregnant?” Asked a second year on the way to Charms.
“Yeah,” said James.
“Did you hear it’s yours?”
“Yep.”
“Wicked. Congrats.”
Word spread just like this, and by December, the world didn’t seem to be ending quite as much as it had been in September. The poster of Myron Wagtail had been retired after one too many midnight songs, and Marlene had started going out with Dorcas Meadows, who gave Lily excellent head massages.
Autumn had given way to winter, which was not so drab as Lily had thought. The Potter manor burst from the pillowy snow in a clambering of vines and cobblestone. The fruit trees were crusted with frost, but the smell of citrus and fresh linen persisted.
James’s friends stayed over too, and by Christmas day, James and Lily were well tested by the trials and tribulations of children. But no matter how many times Peter accidentally set his bedsheets on fire or Remus and Sirius had an earth-shattering row about where to hang the stockings, Lily had never been happier.
Every night, James would lay Lily down and put a hand to her stomach and speak.
“What’s your name if you’re a girl?” He whispered to Lily’s stomach on Christmas night.
“Delia,” Lily whispered back. Her answer changed every night. Last night it was June; the night before last was Saffron. James pressed his lips to her stomach and giggled. She threaded her fingers in his hair.
“And if you’re a boy?”
“Harry.” Her answer was always Harry. James smiled, kissed her stomach, and turned off the bedside light.
‘Goodnight, Harry. Or Delia… Or June, or Saffron, or Bella, or- “
Lily pressed her palm against his mouth and pushed him flat on his back. “Goodnight, James.”
“Merry Christmas Lils.”
Lilies bloomed in spring, but maybe winter was her favourite season.
❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。
Summer, 1977
Harry was born in July, when the crickets chirped the loudest and when the perfume of the Potters’ fruit trees danced happy steps along the warm breeze.
Euphemia and Fleamont were ecstatic. Euphemia traced the thin whisps of Harry’s hair and marvelled at them.
“James was as bald as a badger when he was born!”
“Thanks mum.”
Fleamont let his finger be gripped by Harry’s small hands, “Oh, what a strong grip! Let’s get him into wrestling as soon as we – no, no, Effy just joking.”
Lily held the world in her arms. James looked at Lily as if she were all the stars in the sky. Lily looked at James, who smiled like the sun. Together, their small family made up all the matter in the universe.
“Summer really brings out the green in your eyes, Lils,” James said, all tanned skin and pearly teeth and messy hair.
And oh, how had she forgotten? Lilies bloomed the most in summer.