Open Your Eyes: Closed RP (Sirius, Lily, and Harry)

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

((Backdated to the morning after Sirius and Lily discovered Voldemort was back and got into a massive fight over it. There's still a Harry-Sirius socking RP I need to do in which Harry and Sirius discuss the aftermath of the fight and generally have some good godfather-godson time, but for now that will have to wait. This RP comes after that.

Oh, and beware teh emoness. It burns!))

The only reason Sirius had slept well was his good friend Firewhisky. Lily had apparently lost her mind, and the upshot was that he was now kicked out of their suite and possibly broken up with. More importantly, it scared the hell out of him that Lily was out and about the castle by herself, being angry and rash and probably not particularly careful even though Voldemort could be anywhere. It was exactly the reason she had wanted to confine Harry to Slythendor, and yet she couldn't take the same advice for herself. And there was nothing he could do about it, because everything he had tried had only made things worse.

But the Firewhisky had been able to go only so far. Not wanting to drink in front of Harry, Sirius had started in on a bottle after the both of them had finally gone to bed, and even then, there was only so much he had allowed himself to drink, because he needed to be alert in case something happened to Harry or Lily.

Eventually, he managed to fall asleep, and when he woke up, the first thing he did was send an owl to Lily, because that would be quicker, easier (especially considering she had said she would lock him out of their suite), and hopefully less damaging to their relationship. The owl bore the following note:

----

Lily,

Are you all right? Harry and I are fine. We are both still in Slythendor. No sign of Voldemort.

Are we still

Please let me know that you're okay. I love you.

-Sirius

----

Unfortunately, the owl returned, bearing his note. Which was not a good sign. Now feeling quite frantic, Sirius made sure Harry would stick around Slythendor for a while (an idea that was not so thrilling to Harry, but that he acquiesced to, simply because he felt bad for Sirius after the mess of the night before, and anyway he didn't have a whole lot to do), and then he left Slytherin and went up the stairs and around the corner to the suite he shared (and hopefully still did share) with Lily to see if she was there.

His initial discovery sent flashes of red-hot panic across his flesh.

She hadn't locked him out as promised. Instead, the entire place was open; only the normal wards were up. He easily let himself in, only to find the place empty. Which, when put together, meant that she had never gone back to lock him out in the first place.

And Sirius bet he knew where she had gone. Because she had never really promised not to go looking for Voldemort. His fear turned ice cold and he began running through the corridors.

After he had searched out the entirety of two floors, he finally found her. She was sitting on the floor just across from the Popcorn Room, knees brought up to her chest and chin resting on them, and on her face a very strange, almost frightening sort of determined stare.

And there was a large piece of parchment in front of her. A piece of parchment he recognised very well, because he had made it years ago. It was the Marauder's Map, and the last person who had had it, as far as he knew, was James.

The other James.

Which meant that, unless he was missing something, she had gone up to Gryffindor to fetch it from him. Sirius didn't know whether that James was even around any more - he hadn't seen him for months, although he hadn't gone looking for him, either - but it didn't matter. The fact that she had gone up there and put herself in that sort of position, had taken that sort of risk, ignited Sirius's temper.

His initial flood of relief at seeing her alive evaporated within a second or two, and he asked sharply, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Comments

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

Oh, bugger. Quickly sitting up, Lily flushed a deep red, moving from Sirius' lap to the seat one removed from him. "It's all right, Harry," she said, tucking her hair behind her ears. "Don't... I mean, sorry. It's all right. Stay and eat." An absent gesture with her wand reheated the pizza, making the cheese bubble. Oops. Maybe she'd gotten it a touch too hot.

"Um, yeah. Stay."

Merlin, it was the circus of awkward, no matter what she did.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

Sirius glanced up when Harry spoke. He was completely fine with Harry going back to Slythendor; he could have sat there with Lily until the end of time - or until one of them had to go to the bathroom, whichever came first.

But then Lily moved, and Sirius had to release her, reluctant though he was. One of his hands quickly reached under the table, looking for hers.

And it wasn't that he really wanted Harry to go away. He just hadn't wanted to let go of Lily. But now that that had happened, he looked at Harry and said, "Yeah, stay. Hedwig can wait."

He knew this wasn't really about Hedwig, but it was easier to play along with that pretense than to say, "Yeah, your mum and I won't curl around each other again while you're here."

[kill-voldemort.livejournal.com]

Harry paused, plate in hand. He hadn't meant to make them separate; he just hadn't wanted to watch. And he really thought they'd be better off without him right now, but now there wasn't really a choice, was there?

He put his plate back down on the table and sat down across from them.

Even though it appeared that Lily and Sirius had patched things up, he was worried that there'd be another awkward silence - things were already getting uncomfortable as it was - and so he took a bite of pizza and blurted out around it, "I couldn't get my hair to stop sticking up in the back. I put water on it, but it wouldn't go flat."

Which was probably the stupidest thing he ever said, but he truly couldn't think of what else to say.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

Sirius' hand brushed hers under the table and, for a second, she didn't respond. Just passively let him grasp her hand, her fingers remaining loose; not pulling away, but not moving to reciprocate. But then, as if pushing through a fog, one finger, then another, slowly curled around his palm. It was a step. It was a start.

Lily, too, was worried about the awkward; what she had done was by no means the necessary steps towards getting her and Sirius back to normal. Not even close. So what could she say, then? What wouldn't start something she was unwilling to finish?

Harry's statement, though, hung in the air for a second. And then Lily started to laugh. Not the helpless almost-sobs of earlier, but a genuine laugh. That was quite possibly the worst conversation starter she'd ever heard. But she'd take it.

"Your father had the same problem," she grinned. "When he was in school, he thought it made him more attractive. He'd constantly be mussing it, so it looked windblown and oh-so sexy. But once we'd gotten out, he tried everything to make it lie flat. He even," she started to giggle again at the memory, "he even tried this charm he'd gotten out of Witch Which Weekly. It was supposed to be a straightener - you know, for curls?"

Grinning, now, her eyes were lit up in the most life they'd had since she'd seen the Dark Mark over the castle. "Anyway, James was a brilliant Wizard, don't get me wrong. But charms... Well, he sometimes had problems with them. But of course, he didn't want me to know what he was doing. So he waited until I'd gone out to try it. And this one, he got the motion wrong and..." Laughing, she gestured towards the back of her head, "He took off all his hair. It just...fell right out. In a neat little circle where his hair used to stand up. He chased me around the flat when I wouldn't stop calling him Baldy. I threatened to leave it like that - got him to do the dishes for a month in exchange for growing his hair back. Came back twice as bad, too."

After a second, though, her eyes cut to Sirius and some of the mirth bled out. "I um," she mumbled, shifting slightly and letting her gaze fall to the table. "I always liked his hair. Even if it did stick up. I liked it."

Her hand started to slip from Sirius' under the table and she half whispered a, "Sorry." What she was apologizing for, even Lily wasn't completely sure. Fiddling with a fork, she flashed Harry a tiny, awkward smile.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

She didn't need to apologise. Sirius had nothing but the utmost respect for her and James's relationship, and he would have been offended had she not had fond memories of their life together. He felt her hand move out of his, and he quickly grabbed it back and held it tightly, turning his head to flash her a stern, but tender, smile. It was the best way he could tell her that under the circumstances.

While she might have been worrying about all the things left unsaid between the two of them, Sirius was actually mostly fine right now. Sure, there were issues remaining - the fact that she took the map from the other James's room being a major one - but she wasn't sitting outside Voldemort's door waiting for him any more. She still loved Sirius, and a breakup didn't seem imminent. All of the immediate problems were...well, they weren't resolved, necessarily, or at least Sirius didn't know the details of their resolution, but they also weren't tearing the two of them apart any more. So all in all, he was all right, at least for now.

Glancing back at Lily, he said, "I wish you'd told me that story before. I would've never let him forget it." And although there was still an awkwardness between them, he managed to grin at her.

[kill-voldemort.livejournal.com]

Harry's smile started as something shy, but quickly grew to a full-on grin. He had known about his dad's tendency to muss up his hair, but it was brilliant to hear his mother telling him about it, and then everything else she told him was completely new.

And it meant more than he could acknowledge to anyone, even to himself, to hear Lily say in that tender and slightly achy tone of voice that she liked James's hair. In his daydreams about his parents, he had always imagined them happy and in love, just like everyone had told him they had been. Just as they had appeared in the mirror of Erised, in their wedding photos, and in the pictures Lily had given him (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1069004.html#cutid1).

But at Hogwarts, he hadn't seen one bit of that. All he had seen was the animosity between Lily and the other James, and so every bit of adoration Lily showed towards James was absolutely precious to Harry.

"My - Aunt Petunia once shaved my head. Well, all of it except the fringe. But then the next morning, my hair had grown back to exactly what it had been like before she had shaved it." Harry grinned at Lily. "I didn't know I was a wizard then. I just thought I had really bad hair."

Okay, so maybe the hair remark hadn't been a bad one after all. And the story about his hair was funny now. Moreover, it made him feel that much closer to his father. Both of them had had horrible moments of partial baldness!

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"He made me promise not to tell," she said, smile edging up on one side of her mouth, lop-sided. It wouldn't be apparent to Harry how uncertain she was, talking about James like this. She hid it well. But Sirius knew her. He'd be able to tell. He always could tell. His firm grasp on her hand made a sharp lump form in her throat. She felt...guilty.

She hadn't slept in well over a day, hadn't really eaten, and had been on an emotional runaway broomstick ride. And now she was very calmly sitting at a table, chatting about her dead husband with her grown son and the man who wouldn't sleep with her for months because of said dead husband. It just felt...wrong and awkward and Lily was simply not in a place to handle it. Pulling her hand away, she stood.

"Sorry, excuse me. Need to run to the loo. Be back." She didn't look at Sirius - he'd be able to see the tears starting to form that she was holding back - instead smiling at Harry and turning to leave the room.

There was an alcove around the corner, out in the hallway. She didn't cry. Not really. Lily just stood there and tried to sort things out in a brain that was flying along way too fast.

Belatedly what Harry had said caught up with her. Fucking bint of a sister. Now she was angry, on top of everything. Tipping her head back, Lily closed her eyes, lashes wet with the tears that had escaped, and tried to focus. On anything.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

Sirius could think of only two explanations for Lily's sudden departure. The first was that there was something wrong with the pizza and she had developed a raging case of diarrhea. (The corollary to that theory was that the Weasley twins had slipped the antidote to U-NO-POO in the pumpkin juice.) The second, and far more likely, although he didn't know the reason for it, was that she was upset.

He sat there for a short while after she left, suddenly very interested in the toppings on his pizza. Then, abruptly, he looked up. "Will you excuse me, Harry?" He got up and walked in the direction Lily had gone a moment before.

He didn't know if Lily wanted him to go after her or if he'd be making it worse, but...well, he'd find that out, and if it was the latter, he'd just go back to Harry and let her be alone for a while.

Unless it was the diarrhea. In which case, he'd...also let her be.

He walked down the corridor, and before long he saw her in an alcove, standing there with her eyes closed, looking very pained and possibly like she had been crying, or was about to cry. He stopped in front of her.

"Hey. Are you - ... I mean, do you want me to...." He stood there awkwardly for a few seconds. Oh, hell. She had been the one to make the first move earlier, so now he would. He took a couple of steps forward and tentatively put his arms around her.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

And, suddenly, Sirius was there. Arms slipping around her, sounding concerned, and there. Taking a small breath, she leaned her head forward a little. Not relaxing. Not speaking. But just the smallest inclination of her head to rest on his shoulder.

There were so many things she wanted to say. To tell him she was sorry. To rage against him. To let him know how hurt she was. To tell him she thought she was broken, somehow, and she wasn't quite sure how to fix it. To say she was tired of carrying around everything alone; that she wanted to let him in.

But she didn't know how to say any of that. Nothing came out. She was frustrated and tired and... Wanted to hit something in the face. Or hex something. Or...throw something off the astronomy tower. Something. She wanted to do something and she couldn't and it was making her crazy.

Straightening up, she pulled away. "I'm fine." Too many different emotions meant she could feel none. At a loss for a moment, she turned and started down the hallway. "I'm not feeling well. Tell Harry I'll owl him later."

Library. Hospital Wing. Office. It didn't matter. She was going somewhere where she didn't have to feel. Maybe she could find some clarity. Right now she just felt like she was grasping at sand, trying to find a foothold, and falling anyway.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

She did not have diarrhea. She probably did need to sleep, and so maybe in a sense she truly wasn't feeling well, but Sirius certainly knew her well enough to know when something was bothering her. When something was wrong. And this didn't seem to be directed at him, at least not specifically, so he felt it was probably safe to follow her and refuse her denials.

He caught her lightly by the arm after a few steps. "You're not fine. Maybe we should go home." Together. The both of them. So she wouldn't go running off alone again.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

Damn it, what was with everyone refusing to believe her? First Harry, now Sirius... There was a status quo and Lily didn't like that it was being uprooted.

"I don't need to be sent to my room like some naughty sprog who can't behave at the market," she hissed, eyes narrowing. "I said I was fine. Just... Just leave it, Sirius."

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

Sweet Merlin, this woman was wearing him out. "I'm not sending you to your room," he replied, his voice betraying his mental exhaustion. "I'm saying, let's both go back to our suite, together, yeah?"

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"Why are you doing this?" She had stopped, at least. "Seriously. Why? Can't you see I'm..." Turning, she looked up at him. Lily looked tired and old and worn out. There was some flicker of raw pain in her eyes and she studied him. "I have nothing for you right now, Sirius. I can barely keep myself from breaking down. There is nothing left, all right? Nothing. So please. Stop. I'm not going to...to take a nap and feel better. I don't know if I'll... I can't..."

Again she asked it, voice cracking slightly. "Why are you doing this?"

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

Sirius jammed his hands in his pockets. "Doing what, exactly?"

He wanted to tell her that if she needed to break down, maybe she should just fucking break down and stop running around the school like a maniac, screaming at the people who cared most about her, but for now he figured it was best to take things one step at a time.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

Blinking, she looked at him incredulously for a moment. Then, with a short laugh, she waved her hand in dismissal, turned, and walked away.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

Oh, no. Not again. Now feeling very confused and frustrated, Sirius started back down the hall after her. This time, he didn't physically stop her, but rather caught up to her and then walked along beside her.

"Why are you doing this, Lily?" he asked, turning his head to look straight at her as they walked. "Why are you running away from me every time I want to be there? You used to talk to me. And now you just run."

He was a little bit surprised he had said all that, but it was true, and it was a mild way of asking her why their relationship had become so difficult ever since they had got together. He used to be the person she came to when she was hurt or upset, and while there had certainly been times he had had to prod her to get her to open up to him, it had never been nearly this bad. Now, she ran away. She pushed him away. And he never knew what was going on with her. And that hurt.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

Whatever she had been expecting, it hadn't been that. She didn't break stride for a moment, her face etched into a scowl. Then, suddenly, she stopped. "You aren't..." Catching the words before they came out, Lily shook her head, frustrated.

"I don't know."

She did know. Not all of it. But for part of it, she did know why she kept so much shuttered away from Sirius. But she couldn't explain it to him. It would only make things worse - besides, it didn't even really make sense, not even to her.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

He stopped just after she did. "I'm not what?"

And that's when the dread kicked in. Maybe she was having doubts about him. Or realised that it just wouldn't work. That it had been a bad idea all along. His heart hammered in his chest as he waited for her answer.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"You're not my best mate any more." She couldn't quite meet his eyes; her gaze was fixed somewhere over his left shoulder. "You're not and I... I don't know how to..." So frustrated, now, that she was finding herself inarticulate at this, Lily let out a soft breath and ran a hand through her hair.

"You're the bloke who sees me naked. Who I now have this stupid desire to impress. You're the person I think about when my mind wanders. And that's... I don't know how to fit that guy in with my best mate. I can't make those people the same. So I don't tell you things. I don't talk to you. Because you're not... You're not just Sirius any more. All right? You're... You're this man that I...that I'm in love with and I..."

A soft laugh choked out and Lily just waved both hands. "Never mind. I can't... Never mind."

It sounded batty, even to her.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

Sirius didn't know whether to be relieved or utterly heartbroken. Maybe it was a bit of both.

So things really had changed between them. He had felt it, but he had never parsed it enough to put into words, and part of that was probably because it was sentiments that were coming from her only, not from him. He hadn't understood it, but now there it was.

He didn't know what to say to any of that, either. It was so good to know that she wasn't going to leave him - that she was still in love with him and that she thought about him at random times. But it tore him apart to know that she felt she couldn't be his best mate, that she couldn't talk to him, that she saw him as somebody entirely different now that they were together.

He didn't know what to say, so he just didn't say anything. Not for a long time. He just stood there staring at her, the shock and hurt evident on his face. Eventually, he shifted his gaze to a point somewhere beyond her. His breaths pulsed in his ears in an even rhythm, until eventually he broke the silence.

"I don't want that." His voice was low and sullen.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

And this... This was why she didn't tell him things. Why she tried to keep things apart from her life with him. Because that hurt on his face? Never was there before they got together. It was everything she had been afraid of, it was one of the reasons she hadn't wanted to date him to begin with.

"Yeah, well." Arms folded tightly across her chest, Lily looked away.

For a minute she just stared into nothing, the grey stone of the floor blurring into a smear in front of her vision. She hurt. She was tired of hurting. And she was so tired of causing Sirius pain.

"Maybe this was a mistake." The words were out in a whisper before she even realized she was thinking them. But the moment they left her mouth, she felt her stomach bottom out.

It wasn't what she wanted. But it might be what was best for him. "Maybe we were better as friends." She still wasn't able to look at him, but she struggled to make her voice steady. The pain would come later. Right now, it was like it had been with Cox. Different, in that she did love Sirius enough, in the right way, to spend the rest of her life with him. But in both cases she saw how she was hurting them. Holding them back. And she couldn't do that any more.

Sirius deserved better. Maybe it was time for her to stop being so selfish and let him have that.

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

His heart dropped. She was breaking up with him. She was breaking up with him. It was what he had feared ever since the day before. He had done all he could to keep himself from being with her, because he had thought it was wrong, but he was well beyond that now, and more importantly, it was too late. They had been together for a while now, and he couldn't imagine going back to being her friend and her friend only. He did want her friendship. And if he had lost it, he wanted it back. But he couldn't imagine that being the entirety of their relationship. He couldn't imagine moving out of their suite. Dating other people. Watching Lily date other people.

"No." His eyes now focused on her, his gaze hard, but not far from shattering. "I can't be just your friend any more. And I don't want to be. But I do want to be your friend in addition to...everything else, and I want you to tell me things and talk to me the way we used to. And I don't understand why you think you can't." His voice was steely, because if he didn't harden it, he would crack.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"Don't you see?" Finally her eyes turned to him, kind of desperate and lost. "You just said it - you can't just be my friend. You're my boyfriend, Sirius. That's... It's different. I don't know how to let you..."

She lowered her head, shaking it sadly. "I don't know how to let you in anymore," she admitted in a whisper. And it was true. She didn't. Lily felt this overwhelming urge to protect him, to keep things from hurting him or upsetting him. But sometimes, those were the things that were hurting her. Upsetting her. So what did she do?

When Sirius was just her best mate, she told him everything. Because as much as she wanted to protect him, then, she didn't feel the fierce need like she did now. That overwhelming fear she would lose him if she didn't tread carefully.

James had been her best friend. He had also been her husband. That balance...Lily knew she couldn't reproduce it. She didn't want to. And she was different, now, than she had been before.

All this lead to her walling herself away. Like every day, she took another little piece of herself away and locked it up. She saw no solution, and she honestly didn't know how to move forward.

"I'm sorry."

[toujours-sirius.livejournal.com]

No. He didn't see. "I'm still the same person, Lily." His voice was strained and flat, but something about its timbre betrayed the flood of emotions underneath. "I haven't changed. Or if I have, I think it was for the better. Like, about...about James." It had been tough for Sirius to accept the finality, more or less, of James's death, and he still had pieces of it he needed to work out. But as hard as it had been, he knew it was for the best, especially because of the way it had brought him closer to Lily. "And that's something you gave me. Something you made me do even though it wasn't easy. But besides that, I'm still me. Why do you think you can't talk to me? I...I want you to talk to me. To tell me things. Not all your other friends. Not Robin. Me."

Right now, he was asking questions. Trying to get more information out of her. It was the logical route, and its only alternative was pure emotion. And if he went with that, his heart would shatter. Indeed, he was already toeing that line close enough.

[lilypotter60.livejournal.com]

"No, Sirius," the frustration in her tone was evident. It was like last night all over again. Where she thought he would understand something, and he didn't. "It's not you that's changed. It's me. It's how I see you. You're... I have to..."

Again, she couldn't seem to find a way to express things. His bringing up Robin made her eyes narrow slightly, studying his face. "What do you want me to tell you, Sirius? You live with me. You see me every day. What in Merlin's name would I have to tell you?"

Evading again. Because this was exactly what she feared and now she had to do damage control. Right now, she just wanted to find an end to the conversation and move on.