Work Text:
Of Chrysalism
Chrysalism: noun. the amniotic tranquillity of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof or windows.
A stain on her shirt: red, dark, expanding.
Muddied water squelches under simple Mary Janes as she carries herself through the cover of a moonless night. Raindrops splatter against skin, lips, hair, sticking lashes together, turning the act of blinking into a challenge hitherto unheard of in its difficulty. She presses a palm onto her stomach, over the stain, cold fingers tremulous like the strings of a used guitar. Pain rushes out to meet her fingertips, and she opens her mouth to a silent pull of breath, lungs stretching to make space for the agony.
Tears mingle with rain, and she tastes salt on her tongue.
A shameful bout of fear prompts a swift change of direction, feet twisting from their previously planned path onto a new one. The entrance to the castle, though enticing and warm, remains an entirely predictable destination for her current state. She’s aware of this, which means they must be aware of it, too.
In the distance, a silhouette of a turret stretches out towards the torrential sky; her safe haven. She continues on, uniform and robes sticking uncomfortably to already chilled skin, socks swollen with soaked water. She runs a tongue over her mouth only to find freezing lips and chattering teeth, neither of which proves to be a comfortable realization.
The Owlery takes longer to reach than she’s ever fathomed possible. Seven years of ambulating through these uphill terrains have failed to prepare her for the exhaustion of the now, and she fairly collapses on the seventh stair she climbs.
Rain pounds harder against her eardrums and she considers the advantages of remaining crumpled outside in the cold versus actually entering the tower. She comes up almost empty-handed, for there really doesn’t seem to be much in the favour of the former apart from a lack of bird droppings. But entering the Owlery involves scaling the remaining steps and that is a task that cannot possibly be performed without engaging in more walking. She settles for a middle ground and pulls out her wand from within her robes, the sleek wood on the verge of slipping out from between blood-coated fingers.
The other hand fumbles clumsily in its effort to untuck her shirt from underneath the skirt. By the time she’s managed it, the pattering of rain against her body has started to feel almost normal. From her terrible position on the steps, getting a vantage point that affords her a good look at the injury proves to be an ambitious hope, but she still peels back the shirt, trying not to be too alarmed by the way the stain has enlarged—
“Merlin and Morgana! Evans, is that you?!”
A gasp, and then her wand slips, clattering down the meagre number of steps she’d climbed. It’s a problem she’ll have to contend with at a later time, however, because the voice that has spoken is not one she had expected to hear at this hour, in this setting.
To be honest, she hadn’t expected to hear any voice at all, save for the soft cooing of owls huddling together, away from the storm.
But this particular voice, it has her curling into a tighter ball. “Fuck.”
He’s recognized her by now, obviously, and within a matter of seconds, a pair of feet have rushed down next to her. She’s quite unable to hold off on shifting her eyes, turning them to stare at a rain-soaked James Potter. His face looks ashen even in the dark.
“What in Merlin’s name—?” hazel eyes widen visibly when they land on her stomach. “Shit, Evans.”
She can only let out a pathetic little whimper when he instantly scoops her off the slick ground, not permitting even a second of hesitation to cloud his actions. “My wand,” her voice croaks, the hand not pressing against her shirt pointing to somewhere at the bottom of the stairs. Rain continues to pour against them, ruthless, and wet cloth sticks to her cheek when she drops her head against his chest.
James does not bother turning around. “I’ll get it later.”
She allows his obstinance, only because arguing requires strength she currently does not possess, and though cold, he remains warmer than her. Comforting heat seeps through his firm body, permeates into the chill of her fingertips, into the lips she presses gently over his chest. James does not stop until he’s carried her inside, where the dry, mild temperature prompts goosebumps to litter over exposed arms and legs.
He carefully sets her down against the wall, a spot that is mercifully bereft of bird droppings. She drags her heels across the floor to find a more comfortable position while James bustles around, nervous energy rolling off his shoulders as he clamps all the windows shut, blocking out the cold draft flowing in. Laboured breaths shudder through her mouth as she watches him, his hair that lies flat for once in his life, his glasses dotted with water, his tensely-set mouth.
Before she can so much as utter a word, he strides out of the door.
The speed at which her mind presumes the worst is truly alarming: he’s left her, he’s done with her bullshit. But of course, he isn’t. He can’t be. Because even though they haven’t spoken to each other in over a week, even though she’s had to satiate herself by staring at his head across rooms, and even though he hasn’t looked at her once since...that evening, she knows James Potter. She knows he wouldn’t abandon the worst of the lot in a state similar to hers.
Snape’s face flashes through her mind for half a second, shaking her conviction somewhat, but she quickly dismisses the thought.
And sure enough, he barrels back inside, not twenty seconds after he’s left, somehow even more drenched than before. From his fingers hang her abandoned wand, and the sight of it spreads relief through her every nerve ending despite the blood that continues to trickle out of her wound. In her momentary panic over his disappearance, she’d let it slide from her mind that she’d left the wand outside in the rain.
Some witch she is: the sight of one boy sends her brain cells scattering to the wind.
But she knows it’s not just any boy. It’s only him; the only one who’s ever heightened her reactions to life like this, the only one who’s always mattered, unflinchingly, even if she’s not let herself admit to the fact until recently.
James shuts the door to the Owlery behind him, enveloping the large space in a strange sort of mesmerising quiet. The sound of raindrops hitting windows feels like a soothing rhythm, and if she closes her eyes, she can easily pretend that she’s back inside the common room, toasting her fingers in front of the warm fireplace, blanket draped over lap.
Instead, she’s sopping wet and struggling to breathe, confined inside a room with a person who wants nothing to do with her.
“At The Owlery. Something’s come up. Will tell you when I’m back.”
She raises her head at the impatient tone, and only catches the movement of James’s arm as he stuffs something inside his pocket. A tiny, jagged edge peeks out, and it looks bizarrely like some broken piece of glass. But she’s given no chance to question him about the object because he assumes the role of the interrogator, suddenly striding forward and dropping to the floor beside her, eyes hard.
“What happened?”
She doesn’t protest when he lifts the hem of her shirt slightly, slowly, carefully, to look at the wound. Blood has now stained the waistband of her skirt, and below that, her knickers. “Slytherins,” she hisses.
“How many?”
“Three—Mulciber, Greengrass, Rosier. Lost them thanks to the rain and a Disillusionment charm.”
His fingers curl around her calf, tug slowly so that she half-lies on the floor, stomach flat. “How did they find you?”
“I was coming back from a visit to Hagrid’s. Saw them leaving the Forbidden Forest.”
Behind rain speckled glasses, hazel eyes flash, shooting up to her face. “Don’t tell me you fucking went out there alone to confront them.”
Skin flushing, she redirects her gaze, staring up at the rows and rows of softly snoozing owls above them. “It was late. Almost curfew. I—” a shiver runs through her when his thumb brushes over the sensitive skin right below her stomach. The muscles there clench visibly, but she doesn’t look down even when his finger pauses. “I thought they were messing around with something dark. I couldn’t not do anything. I’m the Head Girl.”
“Fucking hell,” he grits. “That title means less than nothing to them and you know it. You should’ve at least taken Hagrid with you.”
“They would’ve left by the time I could have gone back and called him.”
“I don’t fucking care, Evans.” He’s gotten louder, and she’s compelled to look down again. His eyes burn with frustration and anger and another emotion that she identifies too well; one that has been the reason for her darting gazes and secret glances the past week, one that she’s aware she’s put there herself: hurt. Its reflection is a strong surge of guilt in her own heart. “You can’t just walk up to a group of Slytherins in the middle of the night outside the castle like that! Not without backup, not without a plan. Because you’re right; they are messing with dark stuff. This wound on you—it’s fucking dark magic.”
Like she needs him to tell her that. The cut is rather small, slightly deeper than a shallow slash, sitting on the lower-right side of her belly. She’s certainly been wounded worse, but she feels the wrongness of this one all the way inside her, something visceral, as if it speaks to the magic coursing through her veins, makes it recoil. The spell leeches the blood from her body, incessant and endless, showing no sign of stopping or slowing. “Will you help me?”
In a second, the anger extinguishes inside him. “Like you need to ask, Lily.” She’s not even had the chance to collect her breath at his use of her name before he’s got his wand pointed at the gash. “Vulnera Sanentur.” It’s something like a song, a broken melody that leaves his lips, and she’s all but entranced by the way his lips form the words, the way his brows furrow with intense concentration as he heals her. Because he does heal her; she senses it by the way an irritable itch grows over her skin as it stitches back together after his third repetition of the spell. She can’t stop looking at him, not even after he’s clearly done. “You’ll need dittany to get rid of the scar. I’ll take you to Pomfrey.”
“No,” she shakes her head, lets fingers fly over the small white line marring her stomach, now bloodless and clean. “No Pomfrey. No hospital wing.”
“Fancy keeping a reminder of your recklessness that badly, do you?”
It’s laughably evident that he wants a fight. More than that, he wants to goad her there, to break her open and spill the emotions she’s so meticulously protected, moulded, locked up inside. There’s no mercy on his end; he wants her to hurt as he does without any idea that she’s already there, two steps ahead. But she doesn’t have anyone to blame but herself for pushing him there either. Because she’s done this, brought on that quiet agony in hazel eyes.
“I just don’t want anyone to know about this,” she says. He opens his mouth, retort poised, so she redirects the conversation. “How did you know the counter-spell?”
James’s jaw clenches; a total giveaway that he’s getting pissed at her. He stands up, takes off his glasses, uses his wand to wipe away the spots of water that linger on the lenses. “Fifth year. I was hit with the same curse,” he confesses, pacing. “Don’t know if you remember. We were messing around with Snape after Defence OWLs.”
Obviously, she remembers. It’s not a memory her mind is likely to erase, irrespective of her contrary wishes. And while the most potent thing she’s carried from that afternoon remains that one word spoken by that one person, it’s not too difficult to recall the splash of blood that had graced James’s shirt, nor how the bleeding had persisted for several hours after, even when they’d returned to the common room that night.
“Right,” she sighs, loathing how the word chokes in her throat for a second. It truly is pathetic how she can’t seem to move on from the betrayal. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s not your friend anymore. “Sirius had to drag you to Pomfrey eventually. I remember.”
James is not fooled by her attempt at nonchalance. “Was Snape there tonight?”
Her fingers tug down the hem of her shirt—having just noticed that it lies halfway up her stomach still—while she sits up properly again. “No.”
A beat passes, and then he nods. “Good.”
It’s easy, she can let this conversation end here, but it feels entirely probable that the thought will suffocate her without being voiced. “I know he’s the one who taught them the spell though. It’s his invention, I know it.”
His eyes remain pinned on her. “I know you do. Which is why your carelessness tonight is fucking unbelievable, Evans. Imagine my surprise when I’m trying to leave The Owlery after waiting for the rain to die out for over an hour, only to find you fucking bleeding out on the stairs. What were you thinking?”
Her palms press onto the wall behind her, help her guide herself into a standing position. The movement does not trigger any latent pain, and gratitude spreads through veins blatantly. The excess loss of blood does bring forth some strain in her voice when she speaks though. “Nothing I will say will satisfy you.”
His arms fold over his chest. “You’re right. But I still want to hear it.”
The breath that drops from her lips is laced with defeat. She wishes she could expunge that frown from his face the way he’s erased the effects of the curse. “I was frustrated and I needed an outlet. I didn’t think they would—I didn’t think.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. “Why were you frustrated?”
“James, please.”
“What, Evans?”
She feels some knot tighten in her chest, pushes off from the wall. “I don’t want to do this right now.”
Barely two steps are what she’s managed before he’s intercepted her, stepped into the path so she’s faced with his dripping wet shirt, sticking to defined muscles of chest and stomach. “Too fucking bad,” he says, voice so low it cracks. “You don’t always get to take all the calls, Evans. Despite what you like to pretend, my feelings matter, too.”
The knot enlarges, becomes a lump that rises to her throat. “I’m sorry.”
Something inside James snaps with those words; he steps closer, and the tension emanating from him, a tangible thing, forces her to meet his eyes. The blaze in them steals her breath. “I don’t want your apology.”
Tears pool inevitably. “James—”
“And I don’t want you to look at me like that; like I’m the one tormenting you somehow. You don’t get to do that, not when you’re the one who fucking kisses me and then pushes me away like I mean little more than dirt.” He presses on, cruel, caustic. “I don’t want any of that, and I’m done waiting for you to step forward and explain yourself. So, I’m going to ask you now and I don’t care if you don’t want to answer: why are you hurting me like this?”
She’s afloat in some storm worse than the tempest outside. The tears stream down her face now, and for the billionth time that week, her mind transports her back to that empty hallway, to that moment when she’d lost control to her baser instincts, when she’d kissed him mid-patrol, mid-laugh, mid-sanity, simply because it had felt unbearably painful not to do so. She almost wishes she could turn back time and undo it, but the truly abhorrent part is that she doesn’t really wish so. What she wants, instead, is for the world around them to make more sense, to not be gradually crumbling to dust for people like her.
Mudblood.
Her lids flutter shut, and she tries to recall the conviction that had made her reject this chance at happiness. She knows it’ll put a larger target on his back, shove him into danger, become something more severe than a nasty “blood-traitor” slur thrown in the hallways. She knows this, understands this, fears this.
And yet, the images that flash behind her eyes remain appallingly traitorous: a brush of lips, a swallowed gasp of surprise, a guttural moan, a bursting of colours. His hands, twisting around her waist, pressing her against the wall. Her fingers, running over his hair, gripping his neck.
She can’t do this.
Green eyes blink open, resentment lacing her insides at the memories of what had followed, of how she had walked away, how she had whispered those frightened words: This did not happen, James.
But beyond just breaking his heart, she’d gone on to break their friendship, a repercussion she hadn’t anticipated. She was the biggest of fools for this neglect, because, of course, if she’d been terrified of losing him, he’d also been terrified of losing her.
He looks at her now, waiting for a response, as vulnerable as he'd been on the night she’d ruined everything. But this time, she decides to be marginally braver, because his anger at her is as justified as hers at the cruel world. “I can’t be with you.”
“You can’t or you won’t?”
“I can’t,” she implores, something in his expression giving her a pause. “James, you don’t honestly think that I don’t want you?”
It seems that’s exactly what he thinks. Head tossed back, a bitter scoff spills from his lips. “Have you given me any reason to believe otherwise, Evans?”
“I have, actually.” She cannot allow him to think this. This is one trespass she will have to make. “I wouldn’t have kissed you if I didn’t feel something for you. I think that makes it rather evident that I do, indeed, want you.”
His frigid mask cracks for a beat at those words. “So, you’re admitting it, then? That you have feelings for me?”
“Of course, I do. I just—it still doesn’t mean that I can be with you.”
But she’s done something there. She’s taken his fury and morphed it into something that terrifyingly resembles hope, if intermixed with a healthy dose of irritation. He takes a step closer, and she knows it’s too close now. But a hand on her hip, steady, firm, stops her from moving back. “Well, why the fuck not?”
“It’s—”
“And this better be good, Evans.”
She almost rolls her eyes then, because it’s entirely like James to take a sudden leap from ice-cold rage to unbridled petulance simply because he’s discovered an inkling of an idea that what he so desires lies just out of his reach. He’s spoilt, and persistent, and endearing, and she’s hopeless. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“That’s easily solved,” he whispers. “Don’t break my heart, then.”
“James, please, I’m being serious.”
The corner of his lip twitches, but she’s grateful when that archaic joke doesn’t make an appearance. Instead, he sighs, curling two fingers around a wet strand of her hair. “So am I. Nothing can hurt me like you can, Evans. Nothing affects me like you do. Be with me. I don’t care about the rest.”
It sounds...intolerably enticing.
But she pulls his wrist away, tries to focus. "I care about the rest. It’s not some uncomfortable background noise you can just turn away from. It’s a lot. It’s too much. You can pretend all you like, but the truth is that this world will never truly accept me, not wholly. I’ll always be a Mudblood. And that means there will always be a fair number of people who would like nothing more than to kill me and everyone I love the first chance they get. If you—if we started dating, then—”
“Then nothing.” His eyes have hardened again, though now something intense burns in the gold, something that’s not anger. It sends her stomach writhing. “I have, and always will be, a blood-traitor to them, with or without you next to me. And if it’s all the same to you, I’d much rather take the former.”
“You know it’s not the same thing! Being with me means getting dragged into the war outside these walls without fail. It means having to constantly look over your shoulder. It means not having a choice, James.”
“And you think I’ve had one all this time?” He looks at her in a way that he’s never done before; like she’s the dumbest person he’s ever met. “Nothing about what I feel for you is a choice, though if I had one, I still wouldn’t change it. And the same goes for my role in the war. I will still be fighting in it, Evans, and nothing you can say or do is going to prevent that from happening. So, let me ask you again: why the fuck not?”
The thud behind her chest stumbles.
She doesn’t understand how he’s made this sound so compelling suddenly. Where have all her logical thoughts gone? Where is the fruition of all the sleepless nights spent agonizing over this dilemma?
He’s taken her arguments and turned them upside down, just like he’s done with her life. And yet, she can’t manage to dredge up even an ounce of annoyance over the fact. “It’s not that simple,” she tries feebly.
James pushes past her grip on his hand, slants his palm over her jaw, fingers dipping into hair. The warmth of his skin against her cheek is comfort itself. “It’s not that complicated. I fancy you, Lily. I fancy you so fucking much that it makes my head spin. I can’t think straight, I can’t eat, I can’t even play Quidditch. That’s not normal.” He leans closer. “Do you fancy me? Even a fraction of that?”
Her insides, they have melted.
“I do. More than a fraction.”
His nose brushes against hers, his breath a teasing kiss of wind on her lips. “Then I really, truly, passionately, do not care about anything else.”
“But—”
“And you shouldn’t either.”
Outside, thunder claps, a flash of white light.
When he finally closes that gap between them, places his mouth over hers, that’s the image she carries with herself: James, his face bright, hair wild once more, eyes blazing, water drying over skin. The brilliance of him in that moment is something she knows she will never forget for as long as she lives, and perhaps not even after that.
This kiss feels almost nothing like the one she’d shared with him in that hallway. This one is laced with a sense of awareness, acceptance, and euphoria that works hard to liquefy her very being. His hand in her hair tightens to a delicious grip, guides her face into the perfect angle, allows him to taste her better. His free arm snakes around her waist, palm flat against her back, and brings her flush against his body. In a second, the discomfort of wet clothes transforms into unparalleled appreciation. She feels his skin through shirts, both his and hers, and it pulls a moan from her throat that is as stirring as it is loud. He pauses at the sound, momentary, and resumes with fervour that is sure to leave her senseless.
She lets her fingers skim over tense forearms, restless in their search for more skin, more heat, more James. It doesn’t feel nearly enough, and so she presses onto tip-toes, buries her hand in his hair and sifts through the damp locks, sighing in pleasure when he groans at the sensation. Her tongue darts past his to swipe over his bottom lip, and the way James crushes her to him proves that he likes it just as much as she does. With distracted intuition, she allows her other hand to find the hem of his shirt, already untucked, and slide underneath it to scratch lightly against the defined muscles of his stomach. He hisses against her mouth. She smiles.
At some point, he guides her over to the wall, encasing her body with his. She’s so engrossed in savouring the brush of his hands against her sides, over her hips, that the enraged hoot that finally breaks them apart almost makes her jump in surprise.
She looks up, encounters the judgemental eyes of a large, tawny owl, and bursts out laughing.
James groans, drops his head onto her shoulder. She brushes a thumb over his cheek and finds him smiling. “What a cockblock.”
“I think we woke him up,” she sniggers.
“You’re right,” he drags his gaze back to her, absolutely lecherous. “Let’s move it to the west wall.”
She laughs again, happiness bubbling, overflowing, wondrous. “No, we won’t be moving it anywhere here. It smells like owl droppings, and now I can’t help but feel like we’re being publicly watched by birds.”
“To the castle then?” He grins, hopeful.
She bites her lip, weighs the consequences of her decision one last time, and realizes that there’s no going back now. He’s right. He’s always been right; the rest doesn’t matter. “Yeah, alright. Transfigure my robe into an umbrella.”