crossroads ✿ jily

Chapter Twelve - Fate

Lily shot up in bed, panting as though she'd been running for hours. Squeezing her eyelids closed, she brought her hand up to shakily swipe at the hair that had been clinging to the perspiration on her forehead. Taking a deep, calming breath and trying not to let the sour, painful feeling in her stomach overwhelm her, she laid back down and tried to just wait it out.

It hadn't been a nightmare, exactly...in fact, she couldn't even remember most of it. The only thing she could recall was the final moment before she'd woken up, and that was only because it had been so vivid. She'd been standing in Dumbledore's office behind James, who sat in the chair in front of the headmaster's empty desk with his shoulders slumped and his messy black hair dirty and sweaty. Troubled, she'd gone to him and put her hand on his shoulder...but when he turned, she'd yelped and jumped back at the sight of her own green eyes looking back at her, an unfathomable pain and scorching anger burning brightly in them.

Lily didn't know what it meant...she had no talent for analyzing her own dreams. She was too close to them...and Arabella had always been so good at it. She supposed it had something to do with the fact that she hadn't been able to scrape a moment's peace of mind since she came back to Hogwarts by herself on the train from London. Day and night, her every thought since had been of her decision...of both her decisions. Had she made a mistake? Was she really doing what her parents would have wanted? Was she even doing what she wanted, and should that even matter?

Most of all, she'd been thinking endlessly about James and everything that had happened between them that night. It had only been a week and a half since he'd stormed out of her room at the Leaky Cauldron, but it seemed like it had been an eternity for all the pain the memory had caused her so far. She didn't know what should have happened that night...she could not and would not waste her time pasting together alternate realities of different things she could have done or words she might or might not have said in order to have it end differently between them, because it was pointless. Besides, that wasn't the issue.

The issue was that something very close to her heart was screaming at her that it shouldn't have ended at all.

Throwing the covers off her legs and getting out of bed, she stood there for a moment breathing heavily and thinking she might be sick again...another consequence of all the horrible introspection she'd been putting herself through that week. Running a hand through her hair, she padded out of the dorm without even bothering to grab her dressing gown...she needed to have something to do. She wanted suddenly to take a bath, as though that could wash away her problems.

Once in the prefect's bathroom and assured that no one was going to interrupt her at this ungodly hour, she sank into the water and closed her eyes, letting the steam and the fragrant bubbles calm her nerves a bit. Even if her heart had slowed to its normal pace, though, her mind still raced and her headache raged on.

The truth was that she missed him...terribly. It had started out small, a slight inkling of regret that she'd felt each time she thought of him. After that it grew into a nausea that would plague her whenever she saw something that reminded her of him. The Quidditch pitch, their table in the library where they'd always held meetings...the fireplace in the common room.

"When I held you that night, in front of the common room fire - I felt like my heart was going to break. I'll never forget it, as long as I live..."

The familiar stinging came to her eyes once again and she sank deeper into the bathtub as his words rang through her ears like some vicious echo. It was only after she'd finally drudged up the courage to replay his words in her mind that the aching emptiness she felt quickly grew to unbearable proportions. She'd thought at first that it was guilt, but now she knew it was something much more. Swallowing hard, she covered her face with her hands and admitted it to herself flat out, in the solitude of the prefect's bathroom...the terrible truth that she'd been too afraid to face until now.