"For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked." -Bill Cosby
He heard her high-heels clanking clumsily across the hallway outside their apartment before he saw her. It meant one of two things: either she was badly hurt and could barely walk, or she was drunk. He listened to the keys jingling in the lock and he kept his eyes on the door, wondering how he should act with her.
He knew she wasn’t hurt.
It was a constant fear of his; after all, they could be attacked at any moment, and with the way she had simply disappeared. . . . But he knew within him, even before she swung the door open and stepped through into the apartment, that she was not hurt. She was drunk, something she had only been a few times in all the years he had known her.
She stood for a moment, staring at nothing, before kicking the door shut behind her with her foot, throwing her purse aside and struggling out of her father’s old trench coat, the one she wore every day and had since his death. Her hair was messy where it was clipped to her head, and many locks had managed to free themselves from her pins and were flying freely around her face. Her eyes were sunken in her pale face, and her expression was devoid of thought or feeling.
She was trying to get off her shoes and having little success when he finally spoke, his voice unintentionally low and accusatory. “I’ve been worried.” She paused in her struggles, glancing wearily at him, her eyes slightly glazed.
“Oh,” she murmured. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t wait for an answer but instead turned away from him and headed towards the kitchen nook. She had managed to free one foot and didn't seem to care that there was still a shoe on the other. He watched her back as she rummaged through the drawers. She somehow got out a glass from a cabinet and filled it with water from the sink, before she sank down out of view.
He stood up and crossed through the living room. She was propped up against the fridge, her feet pointing out haphazardly in front of her and her head lolling on to her shoulder tiredly.
“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I live here.” He bent down onto his knees and, reaching for her foot, started to take off the shoe she hadn’t been able to get off herself. She kicked halfheartedly at him.
“You live here, do you?” She laughed humorlessly, “I wouldn’t have guessed.” She gave another lazy kick as he pulled the shoe all the way off, saying angrily, “Stop touching me. Go kill someone or something and leave me alone.”
“I’m going to ignore that,” he replied tartly. “I went to the hospital as soon as I heard, and Remus was waiting there to tell me you had come and gone in the span of an hour, but he hadn’t been able to get out of you where you were going. I was left to come back here and wait.” He paused, as if to be sure she was taking in every word he said. “I’ve been worried out of my mind.”
Apparently, he was right to worry. She didn’t seem to have taken in any of what he had just said, anything but ” “You’re going to ignore what I say? My, branching out from the usual, are we, Potter?” She was wasted; that was all there was to it.
He gave an almighty sigh, knowing he would have to wait until morning to get anymore out of her. He reached for her to lift her up, only to recoil as she spat at him, hissing angrily again, “I said don’t touch me. Leave me alone.”
He frowned. “Baby, I know you’re upset about Julie, and you have to know how much it hurts me, too. Don’t try to push me away; I only want to help you.”
She laughed, and the biting, emotionless sound made his spine tingle unpleasantly. She looked him full in the face for the first time that night, and he was slightly thrown back by how cold her glare was. It was surprisingly sober.
“You want to help me? I’ll tell you what you can do ” go have an affair.” She attempted to stand up a little straighter, and there was a dark kind of fire in her eyes as she glared at his furrowed brow and surprised face. “Get out of here,” she spat, “and go cheat on me with some slut. Then I can have a good reason to hate you. Then I won’t be a bitch for hating you. Go, get out, find a nice, cheap date and leave me alone.”
He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t that she was drunk. The tone of her voice, the way she looked at him despite her inebriated state, the way her nostrils flared as she spoke ” the words she threw at him came from somewhere with a much deeper bottom than that of an alcohol bottle. Was she even all that drunk? She didn’t seem it.
“You don’t want to be a bitch for hating me? Do you hate me, Lily?” He tried to keep his voice from trembling as he said the words.
When she first agreed to date him, when their relationship had first been blooming, he had been constantly worried that she would change her mind and decide she hated him as easily as she had suddenly decided she loved him. But that had been over two years ago.
Maybe he shouldn’t have ever stopped worrying.
“Did I stutter?” she snarled. “I hate you. I hate that I can’t hate you. I hate that I don’t hate you. I hate that you’ve made me a damn cliché. I hate clichés! God, Merlin!” And with that declaration, she slumped over, and he was left to stare at her chest heaving in sudden, silent sobs.
“Lily,” he murmured, repeating it as if it were a prayer. “Lily, Lily, Lily.” He reached for her gently, and again she rebuked him, kicking and whacking at him, protesting any contact with him.
“You’re never around, but when you can manage to spare the time and I don’t want you, you can’t just leave, can you? No, you’ve got to be the bane of my existence all the time. Go find Dumbledore and get a Death Eater to chase. Go, get out. Leave me alone.”
“Is that what this is about?” he asked, reminding himself that she was drunk. He had to be patient. He tried to cup her cheek in his hand only to have her turn her face away from his palm. “I know I’m not home very often, Lily, but I’ve got to fight, and ””
“Oh, God, James, spare me the speech!” she exclaimed, grabbing at the fridge as she attempted to stand. “I’ve heard it from you plenty of times before now. We’ve got to fight for a better future! It’s the right thing to do! Grab your pitchfork and follow Dumbledore blindly!” She made it to her feet and began walking away from him, her voice rising as she bitterly snapped at him.
“Lily ””
She whirled around to face him. “You said you were worried about me. For how long, James? How long were you sitting around wondering where I was? ‘Cause I can’t imagine it was as much time as I’ve spent sitting around this God forsaken apartment worrying about you! Welcome to my life, Potter! Welcome to the life of the little wife left at home while her heroic husband goes off to war! And case you haven’t noticed, it's AWFUL!”
She spun away from him again, and in her haste she twisted where she stood and fell gracelessly to the floor in a mess of limbs. He hurried towards her, but he hadn’t even bent all the way over her to give her a hand before she was once more shrieking at him not to touch her.
“Damn it, Lily!” he finally shouted back, losing his temper.
He grabbed her wrists and dragged her to her feet. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m not doing this to hurt you! I’m sorry if you’re sick of the speech ” it doesn’t make it any less true! And you’re involved in this war, too. You’re a member of the Order, too, and you want to fight ””
“But it’s not my life!” she cried, wrenching her arms from his grasp. “I’m willing to die for it but I’m not willing to sacrifice my life for it! And maybe you don’t understand, but it’s not the same thing, James! It’s not the same thing!”
“You can’t have things halfway, Lily,” he replied angrily, running his hands through his hair. “You can’t fight in a war to save the world and live your perfect life. I’m sorry if you’re upset; I know I’m not around often, but, Lily, ” going out and getting drunk? What is that?” He tried to force himself to calm, wishing it were a feeling he could merely shove down his own throat, because Merlin knew it was impossible to shove it down Lily's.
“God, Lily, I can’t deal with this now.” A voice had begun to whisper in his head that she wasn’t truly drunk, that there was more to her words than a bottle of firewhisky, but his anger pushed the voice aside. “You’re drunk,” he insisted. “You never get drunk, and the time you finally choose to go get wasted ””
“How do you know I don’t get drunk every day?” she interrupted furiously, her eyes flashing. “You’re not home to know, are you?”
“You’ve already pointed that out!” he yelled. “And as I said before: I know! I’m sorry, I really am, but this is a war, Lily!”
“Well, you didn’t marry a war!” she shrieked indignantly. “You married me! And I’m sick of living like this, James. It might make me a bitch ” but it’s your fault! You’ve ruined me, James Potter ” you and this damned war!”
James gritted his teeth. He didn’t want this. She was right when she said he was barely ever home. When he did get the chance, he didn’t want to have screaming matches with his drunken wife at three in the morning. They needed to work through this, to go backwards and start out again from the beginning of the night. “You’re drunk,” he repeated, straining to keep his voice level. “We’ll talk about this in the morning.”
“No, we won’t!” she roared. “You think I’m just shouting this in a drunken rage? Let me tell you something, Potter: what people say and do while they’re drunk is exactly what they would say and do when sober if not for inhibitions! What I’m telling you now is exactly what I’ve wanted to tell you for weeks! You just haven’t been around for me to have the chance!”
He knew he had messed up, but now wasn’t the time to talk. He pressed his fingers to his temples. His head had begun to pound. They would deal with everything tomorrow. “Well, I’ll be around tomorrow,” he told her. “We can talk then.”
“No, you won’t,” she spat, stumbling slightly where she stood. “Ten to one chances Dumbledore will ring your bell and you’ll run tail tucked between your legs to serve him. You couldn’t spend one entire night here. And besides,” she sneered angrily, “I won’t be here in the morning.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, his hands gathering fistfuls of his hair this time. They had bickered while dating, they had bickered while engaged, and they had bickered in marriage, but never like this. And he didn’t want to fight like this. He only wanted to be with his wife. Even if it was just curled up beside her watching a movie on her Muggle television, he wanted simply to enjoy the time with her. He didn't want this. He didn't want a screaming match.
“It means that I, I. . . .” She took a few, gasping breaths. “I can’t live like this! I can’t live in constant fear and worry. I can’t live with never seeing you and never doing anything with you! I can’t live with losing all my friends and having no one there to cry with me!” She reached a hand out to steady herself against the couch. “I can’t live a life that isn’t living! And I, and I ” I want a divorce!”
He had never understood people who claimed to be metaphorically slapped. Either somebody was slapped or he wasn’t. Slapping, as far as James was concerned, was an entirely physical thing, and ought not to be able to be accomplished with words. In that moment, however, his opinion was completely changed. In four words, she had metaphorically slapped him, and it stung worse than anything he’d felt in weeks.
“No.” He shook his head, desperation thick in his voice, all the air suddenly leaving his lungs, all the fire of their fight extinguished in a moment. “No.”
“Yes,” she said firmly, as if asserting her resolution then and there, even as she hugged herself. “Yes. I can’t do this. I can’t live like this. And believe me . . .” She was shaking her head, too, and at some point she had started crying, and he wished she was yelling again. He had changed his mind: he could deal with yelling. It was the calm, cold, resignation in her voice that he couldn’t handle.
“Believe me, I know who this makes me. This makes me the woman that’s too selfish to stand by her husband while he fights for the greater good. I wish I were better than I am. I wish I could live like this. I wish I had a good reason to hate you. I wish you were having an affair with a woman. It’d be easier than now, than when you’re having an affair with a war and I’m the damned woman who holds it against you.”
“No,” he whispered again. “No. I won’t divorce you, Lily Potter. I refuse. You don’t want a divorce; I know you don’t. What you’re saying isn’t of your own volition. And I won’t let this destroy us!” His throat was too dry to let him properly swallow. The expression in her face ” so solemn, so serious ” took the breath right from his lungs.
“You’re right: war shouldn’t take over our lives," he said, desperate to make her understand, "And if we divorce it will have! We can't let it. I won’t let it. No. No.” Everything was spinning out of control. “I love you too much.”
She shook her head, hugging herself even more tightly and rocking on the balls of her bare feet. “It’s too late. The war’s already taken over your life. I can’t live like this . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry. . . .” All the fire was gone from her, too, and it made everything even worse.
He had said it himself: they bickered. But that wasn’t a bad thing. Yelling and screaming was their way; they were always a passionate duo. But there was nothing passionate about this. This, no, no, this wasn’t them.
This meant the end of them, and he wouldn’t accept it.
“No,” he repeated yet again. “No.” And he approached her again and again she backed away, and again he reached for her and again she recoiled. “You don’t want a divorce,” he told her unwaveringly. “You love me, I know you do. Just like I love you.”
“I don’t,” she swore. “I hate you. I hate what you’ve done to me. I hate you. I hate that after I was rushed to the hospital with my best friend only to watch her die, I thought to go to a bar and get bloody wasted because I didn’t think my husband would be home to comfort me. I hate you.”
“No.”
“I hate you!” Her voice cracked. “I want a divorce ” it’s over, it’s over, it’s over!” Her back hit the wall and she could retreat no further. A moment later, he was a hair’s breadth away from her. “I hate you!” she screamed, and the fury in her voice came from somewhere else entirely than her temper, than her passion. “I hate you! Leave me alone! Get away!” She beat her fists against his chest. She was outright sobbing now.
He ignored her fists. He ignored her declarations of hatred. He slipped his hand between her neck and the wall and crushed her to him, and her arms were smashed between his chest and her own. She went on sobbing, and he knew he was, too, and at that moment he had never hated Voldemort more and the terrible Dark Lord had never mattered less.
Something inside him tightened and then relaxed as her arms slipped from between them and, small and tiny as they were, wrapped around his back. She pressed her cheek to his chest as he buried his face in her crazy curls, damp from sweat and misty rain, but still forever scented of strawberries and Lily and everything good and holy in the world.
“I don’t hate you,” she cried into his shirt, “but I want to. I wish I did, I do, I really do. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I do. . . .”
Standing there in their barely lit apartment, he hugged her as if to let go was fatal. He listened to the crazed murmurs that leaked from her lips alongside the tears from her eyes, and his own words joined the mix. They slipped from his lips before he could think about them, but they were true nonetheless.
“We can leave,” he told her. “Right now, tonight, even, we can pack a bag and leave England. You’re tired of fighting? We can leave. We can go far away. . . . Maybe we’re both terrible, Lily, but I don’t care, I don’t care at all and I’d rather be doing nothing far, far away with you than fighting the good fight without you. I love you, Lily Potter, I love you, I love you. . . .”
She pulled back slightly and stared up at him. The only light in the room was a warm glow from a lamp on the far table. He could still see the freckles on the bridge of her nose, the gold flickering in the green of her eyes, and the tears clinging to her ginger lashes. He felt her fingers curl around the material of his sweater.
Then she slammed her lips to his, and they clutched at one another: she with her hands balled around fistfuls of his shirt, and he letting his hands tangle in her hair. Her lips were bruising on his, and he swiped his tongue into her mouth. James couldn’t remember the last time they did this, the last time his hands slipped from her hair and down her back and lifted her tiny, petite person off the ground and up entirely into his arms. He couldn’t remember when they had stopped talking to each other, when they had stopped taking every chance they could to jump each other.
“I hate that I love you, Potter, I hate it,” she mumbled, the words barely able to slip out between hot, open-mouthed kisses.
Stale sweat clung to his skin. There was blood smeared on her shirt. Salty tears slipped over their lips as they kissed, he didn't know to whom they belonged. He didn't care. There was alcohol on her breath. He hadn't slept in two days. But as they stumbled together towards the bedroom, what mattered was each other, what mattered was being together, was her murmured “I hate you” turned into “I love you,” was him promising over and over again he’d do whatever she wanted, as long as he never lost her.
He had almost forgotten how she was always warm, how she was always soft. He couldn’t remember the last time they had torn at one another’s clothing. He imagined it was probably when they were first married, when the war was an exciting adventure that in all their Gryffindor arrogance they had no doubt of the outcome. Their marriage was an adventure, too. Isn’t that what people said? He had no doubt of the outcome of that adventure either, not when it’d first begun.
And now that there was a glimmer of doubt, he’d fight even harder than in the war to destroy that glimmer. The war wasn’t an adventure he wanted to last forever. This marriage, Lily, her mouth wet and warm and on his, tasting of peanut butter and bananas, her hands in his hair, the overwhelming feeling of mine ” this was what was supposed to last forever. God, he’d let Voldemort win if he couldn’t keep Lily.
Everybody needed something to fight for, didn’t they?
Maybe it made him a terrible person, just as it made Lily a terrible person, but he didn’t care. Terrible people still loved each other, and hell, he was sure no one had ever loved anybody as much as he loved Lily, as he had loved her for years growing up, as he would love her for every single day for the rest of her life, and as he loved her now, hovering over her, showering her face in kisses, saying her name not like prayer but as a prayer.
Maybe that was it. Lily was his religion, and there was nothing worse than losing faith.
She lay on top of him afterward, and he relished the fact that they were like characters from a book: he didn’t know where she began and he ended. He would give his right arm, his hair, even his Quidditch skills to be able to remain in this moment indefinitely.
“This is just our way, isn’t it?” she asked softly, a smile in her voice as she laced her fingers with his. “We fight passionately and then we make up passionately. Keeps life exciting, doesn’t it?”
He gave a small sigh. “It was different this time, though.” He didn’t want to say it. He wanted to have happy, light banter with her, before falling asleep tangled in the sheets as they were now. He wanted to forget the earlier half of the night and thoroughly enjoy that rest of the night. But he knew he couldn’t.
“I know,” she admitted, and her voice sounded so very small and lost, and it punctured something inside him.
“How long have you been . . . angry with me?” he asked, not knowing how else to broach the topic.
“I’m not angry with you, really." She gave a sigh much like his. “I’m angry at the world. I’ve known Julie since we were eleven, and to see her all bloody and bruised and then to have that damned Healer tell me that she ” that she was . . .” She stopped for a moment, and he squeezed her hand. “And my parents dying in that car crash, their lives evaporating for no reason at all but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that hasn’t helped matters much either. It’s not you, not really. You were just the only person I could think to yell at.”
“I know you’re lying, you know.” He didn’t know why he whispered.
“I know,” she whispered back.
Silence reigned for so long that he thought maybe she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t. He could feel her fingers running through the slight fuzz of curls on his chest. Honestly, though, he had no idea what to say next, and he was hoping she would take the reins.
She did. “Do you remember when Marlene was sent to the Hospital a few months ago?” she asked softly.
“Yes,” he answered hesitantly, unsure what that had to do with anything.
“Well, she was okay in the end, but at the time, when everyone thought she was a goner for sure ” it was horrible for me.” He opened his mouth to say that of course it was, but she carried on quickly, as if knowing what he was going to say. “Not just because she was dying, but because . . . because the last thing I said to her was to piss off. We’d gotten in a fight over something stupid, I don’t even remember what, and it was going to be the last thing I ever said to her. . . .”
And because he knew her ” he savoured the thought ” because he knew her, he understood even then what she was talking about, what she was telling him.
“So you stopped getting angry at me in case I died.” It was blunt, but Lily always had been one to appreciate the blunt.
“Yes,” she answered. Silence ensued again. He twirled a red curl around his finger. “I guess what they say about not bottling up your fury has some weight behind it.”
“I guess so.”
When the curtain of silence fell this time, there was something warmer to it. He knew minutes were ticking by and there was more to be said, but he waited for her. It was something he’d learned in seventh year. On most subjects Lily loved to talk and had no problem saying whatever came to mind, but when it came to something truly serious, she would take a moment. She would plan the words in her mind.
Softly, she began again. “I don’t hate you,” she murmured. “And I don’t want to get a divorce. I couldn’t imagine a day not being your wife.”
“I know,” he answered, taking one hand from her hair and the other from her hand and using them both to wrap around her and hold her closer to him.
“And I don’t want you to quit the Order. We need to fight. We can’t let him tear families apart the way he almost tore us apart.” Her voice was growing heavier. She was growing sleepy.
“I know,” he answered again. “But how about from now on, we do all our missions together? Where ever you go, I go, too, and where ever I go, you go, too.”
“Mm-hmm,” she replied.
“And we don’t let this happen again. I don’t know how we got divided, Lily, but it won’t happen again. At Hogwarts, when we had a problem with each other, we said it. War or no war, that shouldn’t change. You want to shriek at me because I left my dinner plate at the table and didn’t take it to the counter, go ahead. You want to scream at me because I’m never home, go ahead. No more inner-festering. We might have fought like a cat and a dog at Hogwarts, but damned, the make-up was great. Kind of like this.”
He felt her smile softly into his chest. He knew they would fight again. This war would probably push them to the edge again, and they would shout and scream. But as long as they ended up falling asleep like this afterward, he would take it. He would fight too much. She would get truly drunk. More of their friends would die. More hell would be forced on them.
“Mmm, Jamie?”
Shouting was their style, but as long as she never bottled it up, as long as it never turned into that cold, calm, desolate voice that spoke of the impending end, then they’d be all right.
“Hmm?”
“Do you want kids?”
He chuckled despite himself. “Of course I do. But is this really the time to discuss this?”
“I just wanted to point out that we forgot the contraceptive charm.” She yawned. “We’ll talk more about how there’s a good chance you just got me pregnant in the morning. Night, baby, I love you.”
“What?”
Fin.
A/N: Just a one-shot that got to the front of my mind and demanded to be written. I've been considering writing a chaptered fic on Lily and James during the war, as I feel there aren't enough of those -- most people focus on their school years (myself included). However, I currently am in the middle of way too many WIP fics as it is, so this'll have to do for now. Please review!
The One Miracle by MagEd
Chapter Notes: J.K. Rowling is the owner of the entire Harry Potter universe, and I am nothing more than a humble fan with no other purpose than to entertain. No infringement intended.