Sunbursts and Marble Halls

“You’re just a spoilt, skinny rich boy!” snapped Lily. She noticed the way he winced a little, and her shoulders slumped, heart dropping in her chest. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, imagined stirring counter clockwise and once clockwise for good luck until all the haze had disappeared from her mind. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t mean-”

James got closer, reaching out hesitantly to touch her arm. When Lily didn’t move away, he held both of her shoulders, rubbing her arms.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong? You hardly ate anything this morning.”

Lily sighed, reaching up to press her fingers into her eyes so her vision would go fuzzy before everything would clear up sharper. She peered at him. “You watch me eat?”

James’ eyes nearly popped out of his head. He dropped his hands and stumbled, “No. I mean, yes. That sounds weird. Not every day- I just-”

Lily looked away and laughed weakly. She prodded his chest. “I was messing with you.”

He visibly relaxed, a relieved grin slipping into place. He said, “I noticed you were quiet at the Head’s meeting last night too. Do you want to talk about it?”

She swallowed thickly, eyes darting to her feet. James stared at her, before he glanced down the corridor, licking his lips nervously. Then, he took her hand and started walking.

“Where are we going?” Lily asked, walking quickly to keep up with him.

“We are going for a walk,” he told her. “To clear our heads.”

“We can’t skip class!” she stressed, digging her heals into the floor so he couldn’t drag her along. “We’re Heads! It sets a bad example!”

“It’s McGonagall,” James replied in the same tone of voice. “Minnie is a real cool cat, you know? I’ll just tell her we had Head business. She’ll understand.”

Lily frowned, slowing down a little. “She’ll know we’re lying.”

James nodded, and he adjusted his grip on her so that he could keep them moving out of the dungeons and onto the grounds. “Sometimes, Evans, it’s not about the words themselves, but the implications behind those words, you know? Yeah, she’ll know we’re lying, but she’ll also know that we wouldn’t be using such an obvious lie if it wasn’t serious.”

“It’s not serious,” protested Lily.

James relaxed his arm around her once the October air had swallowed them and they were far enough away from the castle that she couldn’t change her mind and run back. It hung loose around her shoulders so there were still fair inches of open air between them.

He sighed. “Lily,” he began. “You’re beautiful.” Her breath hitched in her throat and she really hoped he hadn’t heard it. “You know I know that. I know you know I know that… But you are quite the ugly crier. Honestly, I think maybe the Giant Squid would be a prettier crier-”

Her mouth dropped open and she gaped at him for a second, before slapping his arm repeatedly. “Why, you chump-”

But she couldn’t stop the laughter from pouring from her, as James attempted to twist his body out of the way of her hits, mewling and complaining when her fists landed, catching her hand and laughing with her.

“See!” he said, waving her hand. “You have a beautiful smile.”

Lily pulled her fingers from his, shaking her head and unsuccessfully trying to bite back the smile tilting her lips. It broke out, however, blossoming like a meadow in spring, thriving in the light and heat of James Potter.

She followed him without another word as he led her further into the crisp, chilly grounds, skirting the lake and past Hagrid’s hut until they got to the Quidditch Pitch. Nobody was out here. They were all inside, basking in the warmth of log fires or working furiously in the classrooms. They skirted under the stands, the ghost of a million cheers falling deaf on their ears, steeping them in the peaceful silence of the day.

James didn’t stop. He walked away from her and laid down in the middle of the field, ignoring the way the cold seeped into his skin and made his uniform damp and freezing. He peered up at her, and patted the space next to him.

“Come on,” he said.

Lily didn’t have to be told twice. She laid down beside him, feeling acutely each blade of grass and drop of winter dew against her cheek, gazing up at the sky.

James’ finger pointed upwards suddenly. “That cloud looks like a dragon.”

A faint smile curled her lips. Sure enough, when she followed his finger, she could see the body, the curve of the wing, the stumps of the feet, the tail that dissipated into nothing.

“I suppose it does,” she agreed.

“And that one looks like a octopus riding a centaur.”

“Now, you’re just pulling them out of your arse.”

“No, no. Look,” assured James. He traced the clouds. “There’s tentacle one, tentacle two, tentacle three, tentacle-”

“It’s my sister’s birthday today.”

He fell silent immediately. Lily kept her eyes trained on the sky, trailing the tail of the dragon and wondering what the fire it breathed would look like, whether it would be the same fading white of the clouds that form its wings or if it would be the faded pink, still scattering from the break of that morning. James looked at her in surprise.

After a moment, he said, “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“No,” said Lily. “I don’t talk about her very much.”

Before James could say anything else, she continued hurriedly, “We used to play Pooh Sticks when we were younger. Oh- I don’t suppose you know what that is.” She laughed a little, tilting her head towards him and smiling brilliantly. “There is a stream at the bottom of my garden, and on a summer’s day, my sister and I used to go down the little bridge and drop sticks into the water and see which one would cross under the bridge first. I was… seven. Tuney was nine. We went to play.

“You get to pick your sticks, you see. You want to go for long ones- they cross the line first, thin enough to travel quickly but thick enough not to stray too far from the current. We were very competitive. We stood on the bridge and we dropped our sticks, shouting and screaming. I could see through the wooden cracks beneath our feet that Tuney’s stick was winning, so I tried to… make mine go faster. I acted as though I could push it along with my hand if I waved it frantically enough, screaming and yelling like a child-”

Lily broke off. James was staring at her. “I froze the entire stream, apart from my stick which skidded along the ice… First bit of magic I ever did was to win Pooh Sticks.”

She laughed and James smiled lopsidedly at her, though maybe that’s just because she was looking at him sideways.

“Naturally, my parents didn’t believe Tuney when she told them. So we kept it to ourselves- our little magical secret. I used to bloom flowers for her, Dahlias because they were her favourite, and make it snow in spring.”

“That’s advanced magic for a seven year old,” James told her.

Lily smiled at him. “Charms has always been my strong point.”

Her face hardened, became almost wistful, when she said, “I was nine when I first met Severus Snape. He held out his hand and created the same flowers I had always made for Tuney. They never got along. She would make jibes at his hair and clothes, and he would use magic to rip her new dresses. I always thought she was lying, you know. I thought she was jealous because I had a new friend and our magical secret was no longer just ours. It was only when I came to Hogwarts that I realised how cruel he could be, how malicious. My sister and I fell out a lot. We wouldn’t talk for days at a time.

“It got worse when I finally got my Hogwarts letter,” continued Lily. The story became difficult to tell, memory making her choke. Her face screwed up and she said in a small, wounded voice, “She called me a freak…”

James didn’t say anything. Lily knew he was still listening though. His body was warm and present next to hers, and every now and then, she would hear a breath escape gently from his lips. She closed her eyes and tried to inhale quietly, so he wouldn’t hear the way the air shuddered.

“Petunia moved out when she was 18. Now, she’s engaged to some hotshot in drills. I haven’t spoken to her since fifth year.”

There was a quiet between them. It settled over them like snow does in the fledgling days of winter, peacefully and comfortably, and neither one of them looked to indent it for a few moments.

Finally, James said, “Drills sounds like something that could kill you.”

Lily laughed loudly. Of all replies she had anticipated, she couldn’t say that was on the list. She looked at him. “I mean, if it has the grit and dedication, a duck could kill you, so I can’t exactly refute that.”

He looked at her, soaking in the amused smile still fading into her skin. James drew a line from each freckle to each hair in her eyebrows to every eyelash and fleck of gold in her eyes.

“We should be dancing,” he said suddenly.

Lily let out a short, surprised laugh. She tilted her head to look at him. “What?”

“Well, if it was my birthday, I’d want everyone to be dancing. It’s not a party if you’re not jiving.”

“James,” she was still smiling, looking at him with something shining in those wide eyes. James didn’t think he’d ever seen her look like that. He wanted to spin her around and make her laugh and immortalise that light in her forever.

James nimbly hopped to his feet, holding out a hand to pull her up. Lily eyed him oddly, but she took it nevertheless. She couldn’t have found him too weird, or maybe she did and it liberated her to realise she really wanted to dance with him in the middle of the Quidditch Pitch, when they were both bunking off school, on her estranged sister’s birthday.

There was no music playing, but James spun her anyway, and Lily laughed. It spilled from her lips, flying off into the air around them. He kept twirling her until her hair whipped his arm with the winter wind, and her laugh was one continuous squeal.

“James!” she gasped.

He pulled her into his chest then. The world danced for her, pirouetting and spinning, and James remained the one constant thing in her vision. She clutched onto his shoulders tightly, lest she lose her balance.

Lily didn’t think about the owl carrying her sister’s letter once that day. She didn’t think about the way Petunia would see it flying towards her bedroom window and freeze, breath trapped in her throat. She didn’t think about the inevitable tower of scrunched up paper balls in her sister’s bin that his year’s unwanted letter would add to.

And she most certainly didn’t imagine Tuney opening her window with trembling hands to let the bird in, stroking its head and staring at the nickname she hadn’t been called in five year, written in thick, black strokes on the envelope. She didn’t see Petunia smoothing out the creases in the parchment, running her thumb over the seal wax, soaking up the words as she read it, then read it again, closing her eyes for a few moments, before she crossed her room and kneeled on the floor beside her bed, where she would slide out an old musical box.

They walked like ghosts through the corridors for just under an hour. They didn’t come across anyone except peeves who passed by setting up one of his infamous pranks. Eventually they arrived at the inconspicuous doorway, looking like any other unused classroom from the outside, Lily had never noticed it before, but as James led the way through the door and pulled off the invisibility cloak, she saw a grand mirror standing by an otherwise empty wall in an otherwise empty classroom, around the frame of the mirror was written “Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.” She didn’t understand what the strange language meant, but something about the mirror drew her towards it. “The words are reversed, it says ‘I show not your face but your heart’s desire’.” James said “Go on, step up to it properly, have a look.”

Lily stepped forward so that she was directly in front of the mirror. She looked at herself in the mirror, exactly as she was, with James next to her, as he was. “I only see us… That’s a good thing though, right?” She asked cautiously. “Just… Keep looking” James replied. As she did, waiting for something to happen, the reflection of James started kneeling and pulled out a small black velvet box from inside his robes and held it up to her. She gasped. “Now look back at me.” James whispered. She saw him, in the exact same position his reflection was in, box and all. James slowly opened the box, showing a small diamond ring.

has a violently homophobic vp

has an entire cabinet full of fascist, authoritarian actual politicians 

best case scenario will be used as a puppet for a Republican House and Senate

ran a campaign on white nationalism and popularized these ideas in modern-day American culture, resulting in many hatecrimes already and more to come

fucked us all over

Trump is a brand name, the name on all his businesses and buildings, its president trump now. Calling him Donald is in the same vein as Dumbledor calling Voldemort Tom.

and they will blame it as a reaction to poc, to lgbt, to the ‘problem’ they saw and had to respond to and handle.

but anything from here on out is 100% on them.