A Different Sort Of Healing

Lily's Nightmare

Lily's POV

The day mocked Lily Evans as she walked down the beautifully lit corridor of Hogwarts. Spring was in the air, the sun was bright, and just one look out the window was like looking at a postcard.

Lily, herself, did not feel the happiness and joy the other students did. She felt guilt and pain eat her inside out. There was no escape from the pain, there was no way she could defeat this monster called Grief. Grief was clawing at her insides and suffocating her with so much power, that the Gryffindor bravery everyone awards her, she doesn't feel.

She hasn't slept in days, maybe even weeks she doesn't know. But she does know everyone can see the dark bags under her eyes. She does know everyone can see that she is having trouble payong attention, even in her most favorite classes like Charms and Potions. She does know everyone can see the weakness she is protruding out every second of the day. But she still tries to pretend she slept well the night before. She still trues to pretend she knows what the professors are talking about. And she still tries to pretend that she is as strong as she was before that night. Before everything lost its meaning and value.

And that's what hurts the most. They are gone, and nothing matters anymore. But she still has to pretend. And it hurts to pretend. But she can't stop now or it'll hurt more if she tells herself that she won't see them alive anymore.

On this particular day, Lily is struggling to stay awake because she has work to do.

There's no time to sleep now. Besides, the nightmares will only make you lose your focus, she thinks.

But even so, she drifts off in her common room giving to the Head Boy and Girl.

A few hours after falling asleep, Head Boy James Potter comes through the portrait hole.

Lily and James have been friends since the previous year. After the falling out between her and Snape, James immediately apologized.

He found her on the 7th floor, in an abandoned corridor, crying. The mere thought that he was able to hurt her so much that she was crying, hurt him almost as much as it hurt Lily to hear the forbidden words out of her former best friend's mouth.

"I didn't mean for that to happen," he said, trying to convince her in some way he was not heartless and he never meant for her to be called a Mudblood by her best friend. "I just was having some fun."

At the look Lily gave him, he ammended "I admit, it was not the best choice of entertainment, but Lily I swear I never meant to hurt you."

The look in his eyes showed everything he said was true. That was the thing about James Potter. Sometimes he was hard to figure out, but other times, one look in his eyes and it said everything.

What she was there was honest and true guilt for her, but overall, pain that he was able to actually reduce her to tears.

After that, it was no more "Evans wanna go out with me?" There was no more epic Lily and James spats, it was just two people who saw each other in the corridor look away because it hurt too much to think about what had brought upon this awkwardness between them.

Over the summer, James had apologized again, via owl, and Lily responded with an "It's okay." James took that to mean a good thing in their new and weird relationship. Eventually, James and Lily became friends, wamring up to each other as the letters sent and recieved increase and leaving the bitterness and awkwardness behind. When they went to Digon Alley to buy their school supplies, they went together.

Hogwarts's population was torn between shock and expectancy. James Potter and Lily Evans were getting along. The news went eveywhere. Some couldn't believe Lily Evans bought into Potter's charm. Others said it was inevtible - for different reasons though.