Jily Oneshots (pt2)

Blank Page

by SiriuslyGeorgia

There was something about a blank page that usually calmed Lily. At Hogwarts, she could sit down in an armchair in the common room, surrounded by the noise that usually followed around excited first years (and certain excitable fellow seventh years), and the look of her blank parchment would fill her with calm, and she'd be able to write whichever essay was due next.

Schoolwork came easy to her. It wasn't fun – unless it was a practical lesson that still made her stomach drop and her heart flutter despite having lived in the magical world for much of the life she could remember. Most of the time, though, it wasn't hard for her to put quill to parchment and wax lyrical about the dangers of ingesting too much polyjuice potion, even if she had James sitting next to her and trying his hardest to distract her.

Now though, as she held pen to paper, there was nothing she could think of writing. The pen felt too smooth in her hand, nothing like the soft featheriness of a quill. She yearned for the roar of the common room fire, not the low hum of the radiators leaking heat that didn't warm her from the inside out. She wished she was surrounded by the deep reds of the common room, not the cool blue hues that filled her parent's – her mother's – dining room. Blue was sadness, blue was Petunia, blue was memories shared that were now lost.

"Are you okay, dear?" Lily looked up to see her mother's head poking around the doorframe. She'd been asking Lily the same question approximately seven times an hour since the latter had stepped out of the fireplace the day before.

Lily tried her best for a smile. She was sure the result was more like a grimace, but her mother entered the room anyway. For the first time since Lily had arrived, her mother was fully dressed, complete with shoes and a coat.

Lily eyed her suspiciously. "Where are you off to?"

"I didn't want it to come to this, sweetie," began Mary Evans, directing an apologetic glance at her youngest daughter. Lily closed her eyes for a few seconds and took a deep breath, bracing herself. How much more bad news could she take this week? "I'm going to see your sister."

"What? Why can't she come here?" The question was barely out of her mouth when she realised the answer herself. She glanced towards the windowsill which used to host a framed photograph of a short redheaded girl and a skinny brunette, both grinning at the camera, but was now bare. "Right. Because I'm here."

Mary crossed the room and placed her hand on Lily's shoulder. It felt shockingly warm and Lily jumped at the contact, before catching herself and lifting her own hand to cover her mother's. She hadn't realised just how lonely she'd felt sat in this room, unable to think of anything but the past.

"I was going to insist she that she came here, we know your dad would've done," said Mary, and a silence fell over the two of them as they were both lost in their own memories. Lily remembered one day at the beginning of her third year of Hogwarts, when Petunia had refused to accompany the rest of the family to King's Cross. She remembered how Petunia had screamed about her 'freak of a sister' and how she wasn't going anywhere near magic, but their father had insisted for hours on end that they would see Lily off as a family. Lily remembered with perfect clarity how a sullen Petunia had lurked behind her smiling parents. She would do anything to see them smile like that again.

Hearing her mother clear her throat brought Lily back to reality. "I just don't think any of us need the stress," said Mary quietly. As much as her heart hurt at the thought, all Lily had to do was look at her mum's face and she agreed straight away. Lily had last seen her just over a month ago, in the Christmas holidays, but it looked like she'd aged years in that time. Her usually vibrant hair, the exact shade of Lily's, contained the odd grey strand Lily had never seen before. The wrinkles on her forehead were more pronounced, and a slight frown seemed to have settled permanently on her face.