The Marauders: Year Seven Part Two

It Will Be All Right

When James woke up, it was as though from a dream. He was laying on his stomach, in bed in the inn that he and Lily had taken out a room at for their stay in Edinburgh, though he had no idea how he'd gotten there, and he blinked sleepily for several long moments, trying to catch himself up. What had happened? How had he gotten back from the castle to the inn? But nothing came to him at all.

Turning his head, he found Lily laying next to him, several inches between them parting them. She was laying flat on her back staring up at the ceiling, a very serious, thoughtful expression upon her face.

"Evans?" he murmured.

She continued staring up at the ceiling. She was murmuring something in a whisper so quiet that James couldn't make it out, her lips moving slowly.

"....Evans?" he tried again.

She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath that filled her lungs up so that her chest rose with it, and let the breath out slowly. Then she turned to look at him, and though her green eyes glistened as though she'd been crying, she smiled as she reached a palm over and stroked his cheek, her fingers touching his hair. "I love you, James."

James stared at her for a moment. This reaction to him muttering her name at - whatever bloody time it was - was... odd? He felt a bit uneasy. "I love you too, Evans?" he said, his voice turning it into a question.

Lily edged closer to him, curling herself against him and tugging his arm over her. She pressed her forehead to his and stared into his eyes, her bottle green eyes searching his in silence.

Lily remembered everything about it, everything about what they'd done and who they'd seen...

James stared back into her eyes. 

"What... happened?" he asked, "I mean. What did Mopsus... need? I - how did we get back here?"

Lily whispered, "Everything's okay, James."

"Yes but --"

"Trust me," she said.

He stared at her. "Evans."

"Potter."

"Really, what happened?" he pressed.

Lily thought how to answer without really answering, without telling him what they'd done. She laced her fingers through his and squeezed his hand reassuringly. "We... we saved somebody's life."

James sat up, sending Lily rolling onto her side of the bed again, "What? From who? What did we do? Why don't I remember it? What've you done?"

"I didn't do it!" Lily said quickly, "It was Mopsus. He -- you were a wreck, James."

"I --"

"He had to do it," she added. "And I agreed. You --"

"What happened?" James said again, his voice trembled on a thin line between anger, astonishment, and fear.

Lily stared at him.

James got up and started pacing, his messy hair stuck up at odd places all over his head as he walked forward and backward across the room. He could feel the tension in every muscle of his body, and he had to pace it off or else he'd bloody explode. He flexed his palms open and closed into fists over and over.

She had sat up in the bed, clutching the blankets to her. "James, come back to bed. It's all right, I promise you."

"Yeah, for you, you obviously remember what you've done in the last --" he glanced at his watch, "Sixteen hours."

Lily sighed. "James, you were really upset. You were afraid he'd changed the timelines again, and you were --" Lily shuddered at the memory of James's break down when they'd returned to the dungeon at the castle. She looked down at her hands. She could hear him pacing still, the tattoo of his feet against the floor as he shuffled to and fro.