a/n: for a challenge set by mistsplash on The Slytherin Corner forum. A LilyJames with the prompts scarred, snowflakes, limes and falling.

This is my first LilyJames, so be gentle with me please!

Recipes of Disaster
i'm sorry, i know that's a strange way to tell you that i know
we belong; that i know that i am the luckiest.
- The Luckiest, Ben Folds

It ends with a little boy and his scarred forehead, and a madman screaming on the floor.

But it starts in summertime and sunshine, and it progresses through pretty snowflakes and endless Christmas carols and tinsel and trees and the clink of wine bottles and the rip of presents being opened.

But they're living on borrowed time, and that's always been a recipe for disaster.

Christmas wanes into New Year, and they're happy and content – married, somehow, despite Lily's many oaths that this would never happen – and James spends endless hours cooing over the barely-visible baby bump and embarrassing her in public by informing total strangers every few minutes that she's pregnant, she's having a baby, can't they see how she's glowing?

She thumps him and tells him to shut up every time, of course, but secretly she enjoys it because – well, this is James and if there's one thing he does well it's loving her.

"You, James Potter, are an embarrassment to your badboy roots," she informs him one evening when they're collapsed on the sofa, tangled around each other, his hands drawing lazy circles over the place where his child is growing inside her. "Look at you. If Sirius could see you being such a pussy, I think he'd revoke your rights as a Marauder instantly."

"Don't tease, Lily-flower," he responds, and she can tell just by the tone of his voice that he's grinning. "The Marauders are serious business and to even suggest I might get kicked out is not only insulting but frankly absurd."

"You really are a pretentious bastard, aren't you?" Lily remarks conversationally, and then he's dragging her up and around to face him, his arms wrapped tightly around her and one of the biggest smiles she's ever seen near splitting his face in two.

"Ah, yes, but you see, Lily dearest – I'm your pretentious bastard."

Lily grins and has to concede that point, hooking her arms around his neck and drawing him in for a heated kiss as her hands fist in his always-messy hair.

And this is how it is, with them. It might be wartime, and they might be living under constant threat of death – but they have each other and when you're in love like this it's impossible to dwell on thoughts of dying.

"D'you ever get scared, James?" she asks later when she's curled up comfortable against his side, his arm thrown carefully across the back of the sofa.

"'Course not," he replies instantly, tilting his head sideways to grin down at her. "We're going to win this. The good guys always win."

She doesn't say anything in reply to that, because God with the firelight on the side of his face and his brown eyes laughing behind his glasses and his hair ruffled he looks ohsoyoung, ohsocourageous, ohsodoomed.

"Love you," she whispers to him eventually, and he smiles and pulls her closer, his hands drifting down to the gentle curve of her pregnancy.

"Love you too," he reminds her, and when she grins lazily up at him with her hair a pretty picture splayed about her shoulders and over the cream cushions and her eyes a glittering dark emerald he'd die for her without a second of hesitation.

And this life of theirs is so full of mortality it's a wonder they don't fade like dying stars.

He comes across her in the kitchen one morning, slicing limes with her hair pushed behind her ears and the whole of her glowing like a supernova.

"What're you looking so cheerful about?" he inquires, stealing a grape out of the bowl next to her and then wrapping his arms around her, above the swell of her stomach. "Decided to dispense with that preoccupied air finally?"

In reply, she takes one of his hands and moves it down over her belly until it's resting somewhere near her belly button, and he knows her better than to question as she goes back to slicing her limes.

"Lils, I'm kind of –" he begins, but he doesn't get any further because there's a gentle nudge under his hand and, Merlin, James has never been one for soppiness but he's falling and drowning in a wave of fierce love for this unborn child and the woman (girl) carrying it.

"He kicked!"

"Oh, really?" she retorts, her voice teasingly sarcastic, but he can't even summon up the wits to join battle as both of his hands anchor over that spot as the child continues to kick, his eyes so bright with the joy that it's a wonder they don't catch fire.

"He kicked," James repeats in a reverent tone, and Lily laughs and abandons her knife and turns to snuggle into his embrace.

"Might be a girl," she reminds him with a smirk, and she feels the curve of his lips against her scalp.

"I'm not even going to dignify that ridiculous suggestion with a response," he informs her, and she just smiles and presses her face into his chest, the love between them flowing with their magic between their bodies at every point of contact, mixing up and joining until they are barely distinguishable from one another.

They die before they have the chance to know their son, and it's the most terrible of tragedies because this young couple that blazed so brightly never have the chance to fade away.

They burn out, fiercely and desperately and lovingly, and they die for their child to survive. For the child, for Harry, for their son they die.

For this reason, for Harry, they watch from wherever it is they end up amongst the stars and give thanks that their love will protect him when they no longer can. Amongst the constellations they glow like stars, and as they greet Sirius and then Remus and gradually all those long-lost friends they wait patiently for their son to come to them.

They might not have known him growing up, but they've watched him and studied him and they've been so terribly proud of him that they'll probably both cry when he returns to them at last.

Lily won't stop teasing James about being a wuss, and Sirius will joke about kicking his friend out of the Marauders and Harry will laugh and, you know what, happy-ever-afters can exist if you believe in them hard enough.

a/n: please don't favourite without reviewing, thank you.