Title: we are wrong

Summary: "She's drowning herself in amber Firewhiskey and tears and he's just another nail in her coffin. In this universe, Snow White doesn't wake up." Princesses don't always need saving, and princes aren't always willing to save them, anyway. / James, Lily, and stepping into the dark. for ella & hpfc.

Prompts: soul, piano keys, abandoned, sea green, sheet music.

Notes: This, again, was written for round four of the Big Sis, Lil' Sis competition and my fabulous little sister, Ella, wrote the equally-fabulous 'we are right' about the original James and Lily. I sincerely hope you enjoy!

James splays his fingers over the keys. The tune is harsh, a clatter of clashing fourths and minor keys that play too loudly; he can't see to stop. The black and white clash against his eyelids and he tries to forget that he dreams in sheet music.

The house is too quiet without the music.

Albus is off in some dark room somewhere with Scorpius fucking Malfoy and trying to convince dear Mummy that Slytherin hasn't corrupted him. He's wrong, of course. Only James can see that now. Scorpius Malfoy is never going to be anyone's Prince Charming.

Daddy's working late in the office, again, and Mummy doesn't really show her face 'round here anymore.

(God knows where Princess Lily is.)

It's just him, at the moment. Him and goddamned black piano keys that vibrate under his fingertips and the remains of a heart that used to harbour a soul. He's been abandoned by everyone, so why not himself? James snorts. How fucking poetic. He might as well be Cinderella.

The room is dark. It's later than usual, but James can't bear to turn on a light.

He hears a creek near the back of the house, and he turns slightly. There's a flash of dark red in his peripheral vision, so he fights back the instinct to sigh.

Lily doesn't even tiptoe into the room anymore, just slings her bag onto the kitchen counter and saunters over to the piano. Her boots are too high and her skirt is too short, and all James can think is that she's far, far too young.

(Snow White was only fourteen, in the fairytale, but that didn't stop the apple from being poison.)

She sits down on the stool next to him, and he doesn't even have the heart to complain anymore. She's been abandoned just as much as him.

They're both very quiet as James plays and Lily toes off her boots, letting the dark black leather hit the ground with a thud. She pulls a sea green, over-sized jumper over her head and James tries to forget that it's the one Victoire knitted her before she-

And suddenly James doesn't want to think anymore. He doesn't want to do anything.

So he leans in, and kisses Lily.

They don't make a sound, but let their lips brush against each other's and sigh. There's too much teeth and it's too sloppy but James, once again, starts to forget as he accidently knocks his sheet music off of the stand. The clock chimes midnight, and the spell is broken.

They pull away slowly, hesitantly, and James pretends he can't see the dark shadows under Lily's eyes.

"Why did you do that?" she snaps, and she stands up, the heel of her sock smudging the ink of the paper on the floor.

In another world, her eyes would shimmer sea green, but now they just look brown and haunted. (Little red riding hood is the wolf in disguise.)

James scowls. "That felt so wrong."

But that is a lie.

It has been weeks of shorter skirts and more prominent smirks, weeks of imagining red hair splayed out on white pillow cases and Lily's eyes following him around their house. Their parents' house. It's wrong; it has to be wrong-

Now Lily leans forward, kneeling on the stool and looping her arms around James' neck. Her lips are hot and soft, pressed next to his ear like the barrel of a gun.

"Do you think I'm a saint?"

James lets his hands wander upwards, grasping her forearms and dragging her closer. It's like they're goddamned beauty and the beast - but which is which? "Yes," he whispers.

She bows her head, letting her dark hair curtain her face - and James lets himself revel in this one moment of weakness, because he is so used to Lily sitting high in her tower and not letting anyone get past the thorns. His sister has always been guarded.

"We can't do this," she murmurs angrily, "because we're Harry Potter's kids and people will talk and how can we do this?"

He winds his fingers through her hair like silk or blood and wishes things could've been different. "No, we can't."

And then he kisses her; and this kiss is so much more perfect than the first because his fingers are tangled and her brittle fingernails (painted black) are biting into his thighs and it's them, so yes, they're goddamned remarkable. One kiss, and they wake up.

He slides his hands down and plays her ribs like piano. She laughs, but the sound is bitter, soulless.

"I never loved you, anyway."

He wonders how they came to be this; the famous Harry Potter's broken fucking family. Maybe it started with the tabloids and the cameras and the paparazzi that followed or maybe just the people who paid a lot of money to see the Potter kids at their worst. People like to see their kingdom fall.

They all belong in a goddamned mental hospital, but no one wants to admit they abandoned them.

James smirks at her, eyes deep with shadows. "We both know that's true," he purrs, and he draws on her bare skin like she's sheet music and he's Mozart. It's torturous.

She gently stands up, and closes the black piano lid; he barely breathes before she is straddling him, short skirt riding up and jumper soft against his arms. Her eyes are playful, but she isn't smiling.

"Then why are we still playing this game?"

He almost feels like crying, because Al's going insane and he smokes on the roof at three in the fucking morning and honestly believes that Scorpius fucking Malfoy will love him.

He's Sleeping Beauty, but in this story, he won't wake up.

And Lily, dearest Lily, is straddling her eldest brother's lap and isn't even out of Hogwarts yet (although they all know she'll only pass because of the name she writes on the papers) and she's going to break before James can save her. Her tower is just too high.

James himself is dreaming of his little sister and Dominique fucked him in his bedroom because Victoire died on her welcome mat and they don't live a fairytale and life isn't fucking fair.

So he tilts his head, and asks, "Why not?"

Lily scowls and crosses her arms and James can see it, in that moment; the set of her jaw and the curls of her lips are all Ginny Weasley, all James Sirius Potter.

"You know why," she snarls, leaning back against the piano where the sheet music used to be.

And he can see the fear in her eyes, that loss that means she knows she's not going to get out of this alive. She's drowning herself in amber Firewhiskey and tears and he's just another nail in her coffin. In this universe, Snow White doesn't wake up.

"Yes, I do." They look at each other, and James is almost thankful of how dark Lily's eyes are - they're darker than their mother's, and a lot lighter than James'. His have specks of sea green and hers have specks of black.

James sighs again and stands up, forcing Lily to lean against the piano keys. They crash, but there's no one but them to hear it.

"This is wrong - but don't you see it? I want you," James says earnestly, and he presses a kiss to her cheek as though he can give her all the pieces he could play for her and all the music notes swirling in his head.

His lips hover gently, and he feels like he's giving her his soul.

Lily pushes at him, leaving marks in his shoulders. She snarls. "Then leave."

"Why should I?"

She sighs, fingers tangling in her hair as her thumbs press dark stars into her eyelids. "Because we were never meant to be." Her lips curl around the words and there is a sarcastic tilt to her head. She is mocking him. James is used to it.

He smirks, and sits back down, leaning forward on his knees. "I've never really believed in fate," he whispers. Fairytales and destiny and things that don't really matter, in the end.

"Well, you should start believing now!" Lily shrieks, and there is a dark blush to her cheeks and that terror sits heavily in her eyes.

James has an urge to right down that terror on sheet music, to give it a sound and immortalize it on ink and paper and piano keys.

Lily Potter is music.

But she's no princess, and she doesn't want to be saved - and James doesn't particularly want to save her.

"Are you really turning me away?" he asks, stroking her cheek and letting his fingers dig a little too breathes heavily, and he wonders if she is the abandoned Cinderella who never went to the ball.

Lily licks her lips, and taps a rhythm on the piano lid. "Are you really letting me?"

"I've lost my mind," James whispers against her skin as he leans forward and puts their foreheads together. He waves his fingers and the piano lid snaps open; a dark tune starts to play. He calls it Lily's tune.

It's far too haunting and far too beautiful for him to ever put his fingers to the keys and ruin it. "Yes."

In this fairytale, they waited and waited, but this prince is just too broken and this princess is just too scared and they are just too wrong. At the end of the day, their love isn't any less tragic than that of heroes. And that doesn't make them any more heroic.