Grief can leave lasting scars; comfort can heal them, and sometimes more. When Lily Evans receives the worst news of her life, James Potter is the last person she ever expected to be able to comfort her. But this new feeling for him, it's only the insanity from grief, right? Maybe not. Lily/James. Read and Review!

Chapter 1

Unexpected Comforter

Lily Evans was so startled by the sudden appearance of a small house elf that she left a rather large ink smudge on her nearly completed Potions essay. Sighing because she'd have to re-copy the entire thing, she reached forward to take the note the elf held out to her.

"Thank you," she managed to mumble before the shy creature disappeared just as suddenly as it had appeared.

Unfolding the parchment, Lily immediately recognized the neat handwriting belonging to Professor McGonagall.

Dear Miss Evans,

Please report to my office immediately. I'm afraid I have a most urgent matter to discuss with you.

Sincerely,

Professor Minerva McGonagall.

Lily allowed herself a brief moment of confusion before automatically rising and heading for the portrait hole. She couldn't imagine what was so urgent it couldn't wait till Transfiguration tomorrow; Lily had so little time between head girl duties, homework and the quickly approaching N.E.W.T. exams.

A few steps from the portrait hole, a loud cracking noise from near the fireplace, followed by stifled laughter, caught her attention. Already irritated at having her Potions essay interrupted, she snapped her head toward the group of four boys whom she knew to be responsible.

"Potter!" she barked, sounding more like Professor McGonagall than she had intended.

"Evans," James Potter returned, his familiar sarcastic smile gracing his face.

"Why do you always have to yell 'Potter,'" Sirius Black interrupted, looking over at her. "Why can't you ever scream, 'Sirius,'" He raised his voice to a very sensual, girly moan.

"You're sick, Black," Lily shot back while all four boys laughed. "Potter, you are supposed to be patrolling the corridors right now. Honestly, Dumbledore must have been delusional the day he made you Head Boy!"

And with that, she stalked out of the Gryffindor Common room, making a mental note to report Potter's lack of seriousness in his Head Boy duties to McGonagall.

Lily arrived outside McGonagall's office in a slightly better mood. She had found no students out after hours; having to reprimand people never made her happy.

After her polite knock, Lily entered the pristine office to see a very grim Professor McGonagall sitting behind her desk. A letter sat open on top of a pile of half-graded student papers.

"Lily, please take a seat," McGonagall instructed, waving her wand and transforming one of the desks into a soft armchair. "Would you care for any tea?" she continued, indicating the steaming kettle in the fireplace beside her.

Lily shook her head. She just wished McGonagall would get to the point. Had there been something horrendously wrong with the essay she had turned in?

"Lily, I just received a note from you sister." McGonagall looked uncomfortable, something Lily had never seen in her normally calm professor.

Lily stiffened visibly; what reason did Petunia have for writing her head of house? Petunia had made it quite clear how she felt about Lily being a witch when she'd failed to invite Lily to her wedding. The situation had only been remedied by their mother, who forced Petunia to invite Lily, and who then forced Lily to attend.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news," McGonagall finally said softly, her eyes becoming a bit moist. "I'm sorry to have to inform you that your parents were involved in a car accident last night. They didn't survive."

Lily blinked. She did not hear McGonagall correctly. She was dreaming, or hallucinating, or being affected by a boggart. Her eyes suddenly stung and she felt as if she couldn't draw a breath through the tightness in her throat. A strange ringing filled her ears, but it didn't block her brain from registering the next words.

"Your sister is taking care of the arrangements and the funeral will be on Thursday. You, of course, will be excused from all your classes for as long as is necessary."

Lily finally managed to suck in a ragged breath, which seemed to signal her whole body to react. Hot tears poured down her face, splattering onto her robes. But she barely noticed; her entire body seemed to have gone numb.

Professor McGonagall looked at her with a mixture of sadness and pity, and it was more than Lily could bear.

Without a word, she stumbled from the office, ignoring McGonagall's urgent call of, "Lily!"

Lily ran, not knowing, or caring, which direction she was going. Her heavy footfalls masked the sound of her sobs. Her eyes blurred, her stomach was knotted painfully, and her head ached as it tried to grasp the reality of the situation. She didn't even notice another student walking down the hall until she had ran smack into a very solid chest.

"Evans, you really need to watch where you are going," teased James Potter, not noticing Lily's state.

Lily didn't even register who had spoken, she just tried to continue running. But by this time, James had glimpsed her tear streaked face. Grabbing her arm to prevent her escape, he pulled her back toward him.

"Lily, what's wrong?" There was no mockery, no sarcasm, only utter concern in his voice.

Lily wasn't sure why she did it, but something primordial had taken over inside her. She needed to be warm, to be held, to be comforted. It could have been a Slytherin for all she cared, but she threw her arms around James and clung to his robes as if her life depended on it.

James looked down at the red clump of hair pressing against his chest. He would be lying if he said he hadn't been secretly wishing for Lily Evans to throw herself into his arms since third year, but he had never imagined it this way.

Slowly, he put his arms around her, pulling her into him the way he remembered his mother hugging him as a small child. What could possibly have her this upset?

For the second time he asked, "Lily, what's wrong?"

She only sobbed harder into his robes. But somehow, through the mumbled tears he was able to catch, "they're dead, they're dead."

A sinking feeling filled James' stomach. "Who's dead?" he asked softly.

"My parents," Lily whimpered before being racked with sobs again.

James sucked his breath in a little. "I'm so sorry, Lily."

As Lily realized what she had said, the full weight of what had happened fell on her. Her legs completely gave out, and the only reason she didn't crumple to the floor was because of James' strong arms.

James wasn't sure if Lily had fainted, or if her legs had just simply given out. All he knew was that suddenly all of Lily Evans' weight was hanging off him. Slowly, he eased her onto the floor, so both were sitting on the cold flag stones. The whole time he hadn't broken contact with her. This was definitely not how he had imaged his first embrace with her.

Footsteps echoed quickly from the direction Lily had run from. James looked up quickly to see Professor McGonagall walking briskly around the corner. She stopped suddenly when she saw Lily on the ground, her body cradled by James. McGonagall's stern face softened, giving James a look she had only given him once before, a few months previous.

"When she is ready, please escort Miss Evans to the hospital wing for a dreamless draught," she ordered softly before turning and walking away.

James knew what McGonagall must be thinking; he was thinking it himself. How very ironic that Lily Evans had run into the only other person in the school who knew how she felt.

James waited patiently for Lily to calm down enough to be able to walk again. He gently coaxed her off the floor, and helped her to the infirmary. Neither said anything; James would tell her later, now wasn't the time. When they arrived, Madam Pomfrey was waiting for them.

"Minerva already told me," she whispered to James, taking his place and helping Lily to an open bed.

James stood at the doorway awkwardly. He wasn't sure if he should stay or leave quietly. Lily decided for him. Looking up from the bed Madam Pomfrey had tucked her into, Lily asked softly, "Stay with me until I fall sleep?"

James nodded a silent consent and walked over to her bedside and sat down to her left. She turned a very tear stained, puffy eyed face to him. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"No, of course not," he replied honestly.

She gave him a very weak smile as Madam Pomfrey returned with the steaming goblet full of a potion for dreamless sleep. Lily drank it without hesitation and then sank back into the pillows. She reached a hand out to James, and he immediately took it and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. He continued to hold her hand as her eyes fluttered closed and her breathing slowed.

"You may go now, Mr. Potter," Madam Pomfrey commented. "Miss Evans will be out until well into tomorrow."

James knew it would be impossible to explain why he wanted to stay, especially since he wasn't sure himself. He gently released Lily's warm hand and headed back to the Gryffindor Common Room.

The next afternoon in transfiguration, Lily Evans' absence was all anyone could talk about. The Head Girl was never absent from class. Her friends, after harassing McGonagall for fifteen minutes straight, were told she was ill and had spent the night in the hospital wing. However, James' excursion the night before wasn't going unnoticed by his friends either.

"Come on, Prongs, what were you really doing last night?"

"I already told you, Padfoot, I was patrolling the halls like I was supposed to."

"Yeah, and that's why you came back with half your robes soaked," chuckled Remus.

"Can it, Moony," James replied moodily. "I answered that last night too. Peeves got me with a water bomb."

Sirius and Remus just rolled their eyes. Their havoc reeking skills had earned the Marauders a sort of truce with Peeves; he hadn't bothered them for years.

When classes were over, James managed to sneak away from his friends under the pretense of more Head Boy responsibilities. But once out of the common room, he headed straight to the hospital wing to check on Lily.

However, he found her bed curtained off. Madam Pomfrey told him curtly that Lily was still sleeping off the effects of the potion.

James, however, was certain he heard sniffling from behind the curtain. He intended to go get his invisibility cloak, when the Hufflepuff Quidditch Team provided an ample distraction. While Madam Pomfrey tended to the Beater with a severely broken nose, James quickly ducked inside the curtain surrounding Lily's bed.

"Go away, I want to be alone," Lily mumbled, her face turned away from him.

"How do you know you didn't just grumble that to Madam Pomfrey?" James inquired, unable to bite back the remark.

"Madam Pomfrey always hums," Lily replied tersely. "You weren't humming."

"Well, I can if you want."

"Go away, Potter."

"Come on, Lily. I just wanted to see how you were."

"Horrible, now go away!"

"Lily, you can talk to me; I was there last night."

"Forget last night," she replied hotly. "I wasn't in my right mind. You happened to be the first person I stumbled into."

"Ouch, that hurts Evans."

"Look, just forget about last night, ok?" Lily rolled over to finally look at him. "I'm sorry I had to burden you with it."

"You weren't a burden," James replied honestly.

Lily looked at him sadly. "I just need to be alone right now. You can't understand."

"Yes I can," James said seriously.

"How can you?" Lily shot back, tears starting to fill her eyes. "Rich little James, living in his big mansion, Mommy and Daddy giving him everything he needs. They probably still send you allowance…"

"They died a month into the new term," James spit. "So yeah, rich little James is on his own now." And with that, he stormed out of the hospital wing. He was gone so fast he never heard Lily call his name.

When Lily Evans left the hospital wing the next day, she did so during classes to avoid meeting anyone in the halls, and under the effect of many makeup charms on her puffy eyes just in case she did run into someone. After successfully making it to Gryffindor Tower without seeing another living soul, she escaped to her dormitory to begin packing for the funeral the next day. She tried to do it without thinking about why she was packing, but ended up in tears by the end anyway.

Finally packed and dry-eyed, she descended back into the common room to spend a few minutes in front of the fire before taking refuge in the infirmary again. However, she couldn't mask a surprised "Oh" when there was someone else in the common room already.

James Potter looked up, startled, by the small noise behind him, causing his tower of Exploding Snap cards to tumble, singeing the tips of his fingers.

"Potter, what are you doing here?" Lily demanded before even thinking to keep her mouth shut.

"I was playing Exploding Snap," James replied irritably, sucking on the tips of his burnt digits.

"I know what you were doing. But why aren't you in Potions?"

"Slughorn kicked me out," James answered, the slightest hint of a smile flitting across his face.

Lily sighed, "Let me guess, picking on Severus again?"

James attempted to look innocent as he defended himself. "If you had heard what he called Moony, you would have tried to hex him too."

"And I'm sure he started it, completely unprovoked."

"As always," James smiled back.

"Look," Lily said seriously as she sat down a few chairs away from James. "I don't know how long I'll be gone; I just wanted to apologize for yesterday. I didn't mean to be…"

"Insensitive," James finished, the smile vanishing from his face. She was apologizing, he thought wryly; Lily Evans never apologized.

"I didn't know," Lily proclaimed, getting herself worked up again.

"It's okay," James said quietly, not wanting her to start crying again. "No students know, except for Sirius, Remus, and Peter."

"But how did you wake up every morning and not, and not…"

"not want to throw myself off of the Astronomy tower?"

Lily nodded.

"Sirius kept me sane. You know he's been staying with me and my parents since sixth year?"

Lily shook her head, looking surprised.

"Well, you remember Narcissa and Bellatrix, and Regulus is still sulking around over in Slytherin," James explained. "Would you want to spend your holidays with an entire family like that? So my parents have been letting him stay with us since he ran away from home. He's like the brother I never had."

"I wish I had someone like him," Lily sighed. "I know the girls here would be supportive, but, I just feel like I need something more."

"Don't you have a sister?" James remarked.

Lily snorted. "We prefer to pretend we aren't related. She hates me for being a witch. It was that special talent she just couldn't match, and she got this deluded idea when I left for Hogwarts that our parents loved me more because I was learning magic." Lily's eyes started weeping as she unintentionally mentioned her parents. "I'm surprised Petunia even wrote to tell me, she tried to not invite me to her wedding, why not our parents' funeral?"

James moved over to Lily's chair as she started sobbing once more. Perched on the arm, he ran a reassuring hand up and down her back. "Believe it or not, Lily, things will get better, you just have to give it time."

"I feel like I have no one," she cried.

"You have me," James replied instinctively, but then realizing how boyfriend-like that sounded quickly added, "to talk to."

James twitched in the uncomfortable silence that had followed. The last thing he wanted Lily to think was that he was hitting on her. He would never do that. Well, he probably would have in any other year past, but this year was different. He did know how she felt, and his own experiences had forced him to mature more in several months than he had in seven years.

"I can't do this," Lily finally exploded. James nearly fell off the edge of the chair. "I can't do this. I can't go to a funeral tomorrow, I can't face Petunia, I just can't do it." She collapsed into sobs again.

From outside the portrait hole, a bell sounded, signaling the end of classes. Lily's head shot up, and panic instead of hysteria shone in her eyes.

"James, everyone will be coming back from classes. I can't answer questions, not now, not yet." Her head collapsed back into her hands.

Not only had Lily Evans apologized to him, but now she was begging him for help.

"No one will see you," he promised, pointing his wand discreetly toward his dormitory and thanking Merlin for wordless magic. A few seconds later a shimmering cloak had found its way into his hands, and he had coaxed Lily to her feet and wrapped it around them both. He led her out the portrait hole just before a gang of fourth years descended on the common room.

By the time they reached the hospital wing, Lily had recovered from her last bought of tears, and James knew questions about the cloak would follow. Madam Pomfrey, however, rescued James from any questions once he had thrown off the cloak.

The nurse clicked her tongue at Lily, who had started walking toward her bed. Normally Madam Pomfrey didn't allow perfectly healthy students to hide in her infirmary, but the nurse couldn't help but pity the Head Girl for her loss. Lily had spent most of the morning convincing Madam Pomfrey to let her stay just one more night, under the effects of another dreamless drought.

Lily began closing the curtains around her bed and James turned to leave, but she called his name as he reached the door. He turned around and approached her bedside a bit too eagerly. Despite the circumstances, he couldn't help but feel thrilled to have been so close to Lily Evans twice in the last twenty four hours.

Lily was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking up at him through a small crack in the curtains. "Why have you been helping me?"

James couldn't hide the surprise, "what do you mean, why? I already told you, I know how you feel. I would never desert someone who is going through what I had to go through."

"So it has nothing to do with your little obsession with asking me out at least once a month for the past four years?"

James stared straight into Lily's emerald eyes. She wasn't mad, yet, just questioning and suspicious. "It's pointless to deny that I haven't fancied you for years, Lily, but for once it has nothing to do with that. I had Sirius to keep me from going mad, and I'll be there for you the same way if you want me to be."

Lily broke the stare suddenly, as tears began to flow down her cheeks once more. James kicked himself mentally for saying whatever it was that had started the waterworks again. True, he had been upset when his parents had passed, and he had cried (and Sirius was dead if he ever told anyone) but Lily seemed to have a never ending supply of tears.

Through the deluge, she managed to find her voice. "I don't mean to be too forward, and I know that you probably won't want to, and that's alright, plus you'd have to miss classes, and Quidditch, and you'd probably rather want to be with your friends…"

"Lily," James interjected softly. "The point?"

Lily wrung her hands. "I don't want to bring back any awful memories for you, or anything, but I was sort of hoping you would come to the funeral with me? For emotional support. Just as a favor this one time, and then I swear I'll never ask anything of you ever again…"

James interrupted, "you're rambling again. And yes, I will go with you. You shouldn't have to feel alone."

Lily smiled, and then shockingly giggled a little, "who are you and what have you done with that big headed jerk known as James Potter?"

James laughed lightly as well. "Polyjuice Potion. I'm really Sirius Black, horribly debonair and a complete ladies man."

Lily laughed again, but fell silent again far too quickly. "I feel guilty for laughing at a time like this," she confessed.

"Don't," James replied instantly. "Laughter is a great medicine for fear and sadness, just think of boggarts."

"Thank you," Lily replied softly, lifting her legs onto the bed and reaching for a text book on the bedside stand.

"I'll see you tomorrow," James replied, taking the hint and leaving Lily to her own thoughts.

A/N: This was written before DH was released, so it is not canon compliant. All reviews are greatly appreciated.