Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is property of JK Rowling.

Those Damn Glasses

There were times when his glasses were bane of her life: when he'd put them down somewhere in the midst of activity and lose track of them and then spend the next hour turning their house upside down (when it came to his glasses, he never could remember to use a Summoning charm); when he'd try to cook for her and the lenses would fog up as he heated their food (he would invariably burn himself and their meal would like forgotten as she soothed his angry skin); when he'd lean in to kiss her and she'd lean in to kiss him and those damn glasses would dig into her cheeks and push into his nose (they'd always end up either wincing or laughing as she slid his glasses off his face); when the flash of a Lumos glinted across the metal of their frame and alerted Mulciber to presence, guiding an unspoken curse straight to him (somehow, she'd never thought to add this one to her list until the frantic Patronus from Remus arrived five hours ago).

And now, lying there in a bed that wasn't theirs, with his hair too matted with blood to be messy and his glasses folded neatly and sitting safely on the bedside table, she doesn't recognise him.

She takes him in. His left cheekbone is grazed, his earlobe bloody. His eyes are shut. She doesn't like that. Not when the rest of his face is so expressionless. Even when he's asleep he's normally halfway to laughing. She can't really bring herself to look below his neck. His sheets cover it all anyway – but she can imagine. She'd caught a glimpse of it when she'd first arrived. The mediwitch had been too quick to pull back the curtain from around his bed and the Healer had been too slow to cover up the still-bleeding slashes across his chest.

The wounds had been ushered out of her sight by a flick of a wand and a flurry of bandages and the Healer had caught her hands up in an earnest grasp.

'We're waiting now, I'm afraid, Miss Evans. We need to research the wounds and hopefully we'll be closer to identifying the curse. Mr Potter should be fine for now – critical but stable. We've been giving him blood-replenishing potions which are keeping his blood-flow steady. We've decided it would be best to wait for him to regain consciousness before we put him in a magically induced coma. He may have an idea about the spell his attacker cast.'

A firm and comforting pat of her hand and then he'd gone. She'd sat here since. Not alone, not really. The mediwitches come regularly to check on James, and Remus had sat beside her until he'd been forced to leave because of the ridiculous rules about visiting hours.

And so here she is – slumping in her chair but leaning forwards, her hands extended towards his but hesitantly resting on the sheets, inches short of him. Nearly asleep but tense, her body moving every time his does.

'You need to eat,' Sirius collapses into the chair next to her and offers her a plate of toast smothered in strawberry jam.

'Sirius,' she mumbles.

He scrapes his chair closer to hers and wraps an arm around her. She huddles into him, breathing in his scent with shaky gasps. It shudders through her nose, catching, reminding her that this is the wrong smell.

'He'll kill me if he wakes up and you've wasted away.'

The toast waves in front of her and she takes a slice, takes a bite. It's not the same when she hasn't pinched it from his plate.

'Dumbledore's coming,' Sirius says in a tone that implies she should understand what is happening. She doesn't. She can't really take anything in when he's lying there in front of her and not coming out with some outrageous innuendo. She stares blankly at Sirius.

'That sounds like a bad thing.'

'Definitely not.' He rubs her arm in a distracted sort of way. 'He knows the curse Mulciber used.'

The toast flops off the plate as she jerks forwards, her fingers brushing James, her hair crackling against Sirius' shoulder.

'He's coming soon?'

'He'll be here before midday. Sooner if he can manage it. Turns out this curse was popular in our last few years at school. Dumbledore and Watkins, you know, the Defence professor in sixth year, they managed to crack the counter-curse.'

'Oh. Oh.' She is shaking, she is smiling – she is suddenly distraught. The tears that had refused to come out from their hiding place earlier are now all too eager to join the scene.

'Hey,' Sirius is clutching her now. She realises too late that he is just as worried, just as sick as she is. And he had not been able to drop everything and fly to James' side as she had. He had been required to stay on duty, had been forced to take James' place in the fight. He had been the one to catch Mulciber.

She turns her face into his shoulder, pushes a kiss onto his jacket and whispers, 'I was so scared. I thought...'

'I know. Don't say it. Thinking it is bad enough.'

They sit there, the toast sits on the floor and James lies in the bed. The light creeps into the room, unsure of itself as it always is at dawn. Dumbledore enters with uncompromising confidence.

'Lily, Sirius,' he smiles, nods, flourishes his wand, turns to the bed. 'James.'

He tilts his wand to the door and locks it; tilts his wand to the window and shuts the curtains; tilts his hands to the bed and pulls back the covers. Pauses.

'Actually, perhaps you should leave, Lily.'

'I've already seen it,' she protests. 'He's my... I should be here.'

An incline of his head and Dumbledore turns back to James. He slowly unwraps the bandages and James' mangled chest greets the fresh air with a startling spurt of blood. Sirius pales. She stands firm.

Dumbledore bends low over James' body. His wand moves assertively in circular movements, his mouth chants quietly. With every gesture, the bleeding slows, the wounds pucker, the skin searches for something to hold on to. James mumbles something. Dumbledore rests a hand on his forehead. The marks on his chest sit there with the implication that they have always been there.

'Done,' Dumbledore beams at them. 'He should find it easier to wake up now.' He gives them both a kindly twinkle from the corner of his eye. 'Of course, I haven't been here,' he says conversationally as he rewraps the bandages.

'How can you have been when you're supposed to be at the school?' Sirius joins in easily, his smile back in earnest now that his best friend is out of danger.

Lily is too stuck with gratitude to speak. She moves to Dumbledore, rests her hand on his sleeve. He turns to look at her.

'Thank you,' she whispers, her hands briefly closing around his wrist.

He blinks once, twice, puts a warm hand on her shoulder.

'My pleasure, Miss Evans,' he says lightly, though his eyes are searching. He stays still for a second, still watching her, before he moves abruptly to the door.

'Now, if you don't mind, I must return to Hogwarts. Some bright sparks in the fifth year have taken it upon themselves to become the latest pranksters.' His eyes flash with amusement in Sirius' direction. 'Good day.'

The door clicks behind him. Sirius jumps, laughs, tugs Lily into his arms and dances with her. She is laughing, crying, exhausted.

'I need to go,' he tells her. 'They'll come to check on him soon enough and visiting hours don't start for another three hours. Plus Moony and Wormtail are going spare.' He squeezes her close one last time, crosses the room to James' bedside and ruffles his congealed hair, not caring that blood and hair crinkle in the creases of his hand. 'See you this afternoon, I've no doubt, Prongs.'

He grabs James' Cloak from under the chair he had been sitting in and chuckling, leaves the room.

She takes up her place by his side again, pulls her chair closer so that now she can cradle his hands in hers. She drops a kiss onto his bruised knuckles and settles her head on his arm. She sleeps.

A terrified flustering sound wakes her. James is back. He lies perfectly still, barely breathing, barely making a sound, until the need for oxygen is too great and he needs to pull in a loud, fierce breath. His eyes are desperate, flinching, squinting. Her heart twinges. He cannot see and he is scared.

Her eyes don't leave him, her fingers twist around his glasses and slowly, carefully, she pushes them onto his nose.

Blink. Blink. Close...

Blink.

'Lily.' He has never said her name like that before. Relief, fear, love, desperation, soft, brutal and shaking in his voice. She has never disliked how he says her name before now.

'You're safe, James. I'm safe. We're in St. Mungos. You're safe.'

'Lily.' He is trembling, his body flinches with each tremor. His arms look for her, she goes to them. He clings to her, unashamed. His heart is pounding harshly against her and his breaths are knotting into her hair. 'Lily.'

'Hush, you're alright. I swear it, you're perfectly safe.'

Fumbling, stuttering, they kiss. They cannot bring themselves to stop. A cough sounds. They part.

'You're awake, then,' the Healer says in a stern voice, his eyes furrowed in her direction. 'We could have done with knowing that immediately.'

James can't speak. She doesn't feel the need to explain anything. It should be obvious, surely.

She moves back to reclaim her seat but James tangles his hand into hers. He doesn't look away.

The Healer sighs impatiently. 'Let's have a look at you then.' He pulls the covers back, pulls the bandages back and stares.

'But... Where are the wounds?' He looks up sharply at her. 'What has happened to Mr Potter's wounds?'

She makes an admirable attempt at looking confused, surprised. 'I don't... I don't know. I fell asleep.'

The Healer frowns. He lets his wand travel the length of James' body, his mouth mumbling. 'There's no trace whatsoever of any dark magic anymore,' he exclaims.

She frowns now, too. 'Isn't that a good thing?'

His eyebrows contract. 'Well. Yes. But I just don't understand what's happened here.' He looks at James and says frankly, 'By all rights, Mr Potter, you should be knocking at death's door right now.'

James pulls his gaze from looking at her and smiles slightly. 'I've always enjoyed a good game of knock-a-door-run,' he explains in a quiet voice.

She laughs. His eyes find hers again.

The Healer casts more spells, finds no answers. 'I'll come back in an hour to check on your progress,' he says in a thoroughly bemused tone before he leaves them alone.

They can only look at each other. She knows, somewhere deep inside, that Lily usually doesn't like this sort of soppiness. She knows that Lily actually cringes when she sees couples gazing into each other's eyes, and that Lily normally chastises James for this sort of behaviour. She knows all of this but she can't bring herself to stop.

And there, with his eyes open, his lips parted as though drinking her in, she sees it all so clearly. They are sitting there, eating breakfast at the same kitchen table he'd proposed at thirteen hours ago. He is stealing all of the jam and she is trying her best to remind him to share; they both know he will feed her most of his toast. And there, in the background, just heard beneath their teasing, is the happy chatter of children with messy red hair and charming smiles. These children run in just as he bends down to pick up the glasses that she had tossed across the room mid-kiss and crack as the lenses shatter under the shoe of their eldest.

There is no time to waste. They never have any time to themselves anymore. Meals are interrupted by phoenixes, kisses are broken by the Floo, proposals are halted by calls to battle. She moved towards him, as she had nine months ago in that dark, secret corridor of Hogwarts. Pressed her cheek against his and leaned in so that her mouth was nestled against his ear in that old, familiar way. She slid one small kiss onto his bloody earlobe before she whispered, 'Yes.'