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JILY CHALLENGE | APRIL 2022 | @jilychallenge

My partner was the incredible @glasschampagne! 

Prompt: “we make eye contact before both trying to steal the last seat on the bus/train and i end up in your lap and fuck you, I’m going to stay here because I’ve had a really long day and this seat was rightfully mine”

Read on ao3   Master list

One

There are two rituals Lily held sacred to her heart; they were processes that Lily thoroughly enjoyed and neededto unwind her day. As a chronic overachiever, Lily had packed her uni days to the brim with classes, clubs, and jobs, which led to a lot of stress. So, she found solace in her rituals. They felt like luxuries to her. 

The first ritual was to walk to the coffee shop and get the strongest cup of tea they served on the menu, piping hot and sickeningly sweet. Lily swore the second she took a sip, half of the day’s worries and stresses melted as the tea burned her tongue. 

The second ritual was her bus ride. Her packed schedule had somehow miraculously worked out that Lily wouldn’t need to commute at the busiest times. Sure, there were still a lot of people, but there was always a seat available for her to sit in and wait until the last stop. She’d tap in, her headphones already playing an audiobook or her relaxation playlist, and sit down. She could sip her tea, stare out the window, and take these forty-five minutes to pretend that everything was fine and her life was put together. 

Keep reading

Chapter 16 - Wildflower

James was more anxious than ever as he pulled up in front of his parents’ house, Lily and Sirius were talking about something he wasn’t paying attention to and didn’t seem to mind the fact that they had arrived.

The driveway was clear so he was able to park without any problems, and even though the flowers were dead in the snow, in general, everything was very neat and clean, which showed that his mum had been worried about Lily being there, because normally, she would wait for the first blizzard to clear the garden.

The garland on the door was new and larger than the old one, and the Christmas decorations had been extended to the windows and even the chimney; it was as if he’d parked in a house out of a fairy tale, and he looked twice at the number on the wall to make sure it was in the right place. They were actually worrying about what Lily would think of them.

“Wow, do we even have reindeer in the backyard?” Sirius said, watching the ceramic animal next to the mailbox.

“Looks like Mum wanted to change a few things this year,”

READ MORE ON AO3

{So after i read all the young dudes i was obviously wrecked and i wanted to change the ending so it didnt hurt as much. I dont think you need to read ATYD to read this (i am kida taking it as canon) but if you haven’t you really should. Anyway the chapters vary in veiwpoint and this one is from Lily’s. Enjoy :) }

Chapter 1 (read here on Ao3. i think i have like four chapters posted now)

She heard the scream from her husband

She had heard the scream from her husband and the cruel words the monster had sneered at him and the flash of green had shone through the entire house but she couldn’t let herself think about it. She would later. If there was a later.

Instead she had to focus on her son.

She held the boy close to her chest, tears streaming down her face, before placing him in his crib.

She could hear the footsteps of the man walking through the house, the charms for changing the layout only slowing down the inevitable.

Her voice shook as she whispered to Harry that she loved him. That his father loved him. That Sirius and Lupin loved him. She was about to say Peter but then realised that he must have given the information to Voldemort. Anyway it didn’t matter now.

She told her son how much he was loved by her and his father and their friends. And how much his grandparents would have loved him. How much anyone who met him had loved him.

Then the door flew open and ‘he’ stood there.

She pleaded with him. Pleaded and pleaded but green light shot towards her and the world went black.

She had visions in that darkness. Visions of her son and her husband. Of her friends and her family. Happy ones to start. Memories of days in Hogwarts spent by the lake. Of days before Hogwarts when tuney had been kind to her and Severus had been a good person. Of her wedding day and the day Harry was born. But slowly they turned darker. Memories of Harry crying. her friends arguing. Of her and James arguing. Meetings about the war. Severus and Petunia cursing at her. Hearing the lists of the dead which had grown longer everyday. Seeing the corpses at the funerals. Seeing Marlene lying so still. Hearing the thud of James hitting the floor.

Then darkness crept in again and she saw nothing more.

When she awoke she couldn’t see anything. She was lying on something hard, perhaps a large rock and there was wind whistling loudly and the sound of waves crashing somewhere near. She shivered and peered into the darkness.

She felt hollow. She hadn’t a clue what had happened and where she was. She supposed she was dead but she felt very cold and she was definitely corporeal as she could feel herself and the rock she was on.

As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness she tried to use her magic. No luck. Not that she had expected there to be a result as she had died far away from her wand. Well, had she died?

Lily Potter had always been a quick and logical thinker. One of the things that had set her so apart from her husband and that had held her back when she started liking him was that she would think things through carefully and try and come up with the best solution to a problem whereas James would rush straight into things without giving a second thought to the matter. At first she had struggled with that but had eventually realised that his need to protect his loved ones, that often hindered his thoughts was what would keep them safe during the war. At any rate he wasn’t as nearly so reckless as his best friend. That was something at least.
As she was sitting in the dark thinking about this Lily wondered how Remus could deal with being with sirius. Knowing that the man’s recklessness and impulsiveness had put both of them in danger so often. Yet Remus is always stuck by him.

Thinking of her friends had helped Lily calm down. But then she remembered that her husband was dead and her son probably was too and she melted down into tears.
Light drops of water at first. Just enough to coat her lips with salt before she was sobbing loudly and uncontrollably.

After a few seconds of sobbing loudly someone from somewhere in the darkness asked

“Is someone there?”

She would have recognised that voice anywhere and despite the situation she grinned happily.

“James?” She asked, not caring that he couldn’t be speaking, that he was dead.

“Lils!” James shouted, the relief in his voice obvious. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I think so. Nothing really hurts. Are you OK?”

“Yeah. What happened? Where are we?”

“I don’t know darling. But he’s got Harry. I’m sorry I tried to hold him off but he cursed me. I thought I was going to die. I thought…. I thought he killed you” The tears started again as she tripped over her words.

“Darling it’s alright. You did everything you could and obviously I’m not dead.” He joked, a bit of humour in the dank place they were in cheering Lily up immensely.

They tried to find each other by following their voices but they came to the conclusion that they were trapped apart from each other. They tried magic again and again. Spells for light. For letting people know where you were. For help. For heat. Even patronuses but nothing worked. So they gave up and talked to each other through the darkness.
Hours later, or at least what Lily thought to be hours later James drifted off to sleep and she sat in the silence listening to his snoring. She must have fallen asleep soon after and she woke up with a dim light shining through the room.

She could see it more clearly now. Cavernous with tall ceilings and rough walls. There was a gate of sorts at one end of the room,enclosing her. A thin slit in the wall gave way to light behind it and she could hear seagulls screeching over the sound of the waves.

James was awake too and his cell, for want of a better word, faced Lily’s. They were so close. Barely a meter and a half between the two sets of bars and when they stretched their arms through their fingertips scraped each other.

If they strained their ears and tried to listen past the deafening waves they could hear screaming coming from far above them.

Food and water appeared in their rooms three times that day and they ate in silence, so rare for the two of them. So rare that it was just the two of them. Whilst in hiding they had barely a moment together without Harry and before that there were always friends, usually Sirius and Remus spending time with them.

In between meals they talked. They tried to figure out where they were and what had happened to them. They also tried to assure each other that Harry would be OK but neither of them really believed it. However if the unspeakable had happened neither of them would have been able to face it and they both cried themselves to sleep that night.
The next day the sound of the waves disappeared for awhile and the screaming above them stopped as loud shouts and jeers sounded through the hall and cells they were in.

And those shouts were what led James to his theory of where they were.

They were sitting in silence a few days later when Lily suddenly felt very cold and she shivered. Dark memories and thoughts infiltrated her mind and she looked over at James who had started to cry.

Then the feeling was lessened and James jumped up with a triumphant laugh.

“Lils! I figured out where we are!” He said gleefully.

“Where?”

“Azkaban!” He said, the happiness in his voice fading.

“What? How?” She asked incredulously.

“I don’t know how we got here but it just seems the most likely outcome. We know we’re in a castle near the sea. We know that there are other people in this place who are being tortured or something and we both keep on getting periods where we feel terrible. So dementors possibly. ”

Lily didn’t know what to make of this other than admiring her husband’s thought process.

This revaluation didn’t help the two of them much however perhaps it calmed them a little to know where they were and shake off some of the uncertainty.

Over the next few days they could hear more shouting and heckling coming from above but not as loud as from the second day.

And soon days must have passed into weeks and weeks must have passed into months. They tried keeping track by scratching tallies on the walls but they kept on having different answers.

They tried not to think about what might have happened to Harry or to their friends or what was going on with the war and instead they talked about memories. Happy ones usually especially that summer in Cornwall before everything went downhill. As more time passed they were starting to run out of things in their life to talk about so they started making up stories about different worlds.

Months stretched into what must have been years and any hope they might have had at the beginning of escaping or being rescued was scuppered. They had tried hundreds of times to escape but nothing worked and no one had come near them.

At a certain point talking and thinking about their friends was too much and they spoke very rarely of them if at all. They spent most of their time telling stories and surprisingly dancing.

Lily had never been amazing at dancing. Sure she could dance in a party in the gryffindor common room but that was about the extent of her talents. James however had been taking lessons his whole life.

In a suppressed memory, Sirius has taught Lily to dance for her wedding but she had resigned not to think of her friends and that memory had faded.
James taught her to dance in the prison. They would sing songs that they had played on Sirius’ record player in Hogwarts and music they had listened to after school and they would dance to the music together, waiting for when they could hold each other again.

So for years and years, they would tell tales from worlds they had constructed in their heads and they would dance and sing and scream until they fell asleep, their hands stretching towards each other through the barriers.

Lily:omg James is so annoying. I can’t believe im gonna sleep with him

Remus: well you don’t have to sleep with him.

Lily:nah I know but I’m still going to

Lily:*exists*

James: enemies to friends to lovers, fluff, mutual pining, hurt comfort, kid fic, angst with happy ending 300k fanfiction.