She realized she looked a bit like a madwoman only after she'd been parked in front of the house for ten minutes. She'd managed to grab some trainers on the way out, but she thought they might be James' and her bare feet slipped inside them when she walked. The robe was tied tight around her middle but still only barely reached mid-thigh, and that was before the wind whipped it every which way. Her hair was a mess, her skin was made raw from the wind, and she had tears running down her face. She wasn't sure if she was actually sad, or just confused, but she was looking at the house that wasn't her house and she watched the family that wasn't her family and she was crying because she just didn't get it.

What was going on? She can't have been out of it long enough for her family to move away, and even if she was, why on Earth would James Potter think she was his wife? And why did she wake up in a house in England rather than Hogwarts? None of it made any sense.

So was this a dream? If it was, she should be awake by now, and anyway that didn't explain why it felt so real. She looked down at the spot on her arm she'd been pinching for the last seven minutes. It was bright red, but when she looked in the window of her childhood home, she still didn't see her mother.

She heard a pop to her right, and suddenly Remus was laying a hesitant hand on her shoulder.

"I don't understand," she said, not looking at him. Remus said nothing, just let her stare at the smoke billowing out of the industrial chimneys down the street from them.

"Lily, come back to the house. Let's figure this out." Lily turned to look at Remus. His hands were in his pockets and he was looking hesitantly at her, which she didn't like but it was still better than when James had looked at her like she'd lost her mind. Remus looked thinner than he had the last time she'd seen him, and slightly taller. Upon closer inspection, she noted that she was right - there were definitely more scars on his face.

"You look different," she said, for lack of anything else.

He simply held a hand out to her, and after one last look back at the house, she took it and apparated with him. She held back as Remus left the entryway. She pulled a curtain aside and took a look out the window. She'd missed it in her rush earlier, but the village they were in was quaint. There were several other houses, all in the same style, and a church at the end of the road. She saw a few signs of magical households (a blanket-covered pile on a porch in the shape of stacked cauldrons, a Tornados poster - edited to show the keeper kicking a football with a flag in his hand where there should have been a broom - peeking through a window), but otherwise the neighbors seemed mostly muggle. She let the curtain fall back.

The other three were sitting in the living room, and they all looked up at her as she entered the room. They didn't seem to have any plans to speak any time soon, so Lily did instead.

"I need clothes."

"There's some in your dresser upstairs," James said.

Lily didn't bother looking confused at that. She was confused, they were confused - at least they were all on the same page. She retraced her steps back up the stairs and into the room she'd woken up in. There were two identical dressers on either side of the room. Lily picked the one on the left, and opened it to find a drawer full of boxers and socks. She quickly closed it. She did not want to know James that intimately. The other drawer was full of clothes that weren't exactly her style, but were nice nonetheless. She took her time getting dressed, then headed back downstairs.

The boys hadn't moved from where they were seated, but were now all leaning in toward Remus as he spoke in hushed tones to them. She figured he was probably trying to discreetly fill them in on her minor breakdown in Cokeworth, so Lily cleared her throat before she entered the room in order to give them time to pretend that they weren't talking about her.

She sat down on the couch, her back to the armrest so that she could face all four of them at once. "I'm confused," she started.

"It's probably brain damage," Sirius added carelessly.

"What he means," Remus said with a glare shot toward Sirius, "is that it's probably temporary. And that we can help you with any questions you have."

Lily half-grinned. "Well, you're still acting as the tactful one of the group, so things can't be that different." The boys laughed, but it was awkward, stilted. Remus was the next to speak, from off to her right. "Lily, what's the last thing you remember?"

"Potions," she said, absently rubbing the bump on her head from the explosion that'd flung her across the room.

"What potion?" Sirius asked

"No, Padfoot, she said potions, like the class," Remus corrected. "Lily, what year is it?"

"1977," she answered hesitantly. "...right?"

The boys all looked at each other. Lily's throat felt itchy.

"Why? What is it?" Nobody said anything. "What year is it?" she asked, more shrilly this time.

"Lily, calm down," Remus started. "It's 1979-"

"Seventy-nine?!"

"-which isn't too bad, only two years. I'm sure you'll get those memories back in no time."

"Two years...two years of my life...I lost two years…." Lily felt like she was going to be sick.

"Wait, what part of 1977?" James suddenly asked.

"What?"

"You said the last thing you remember is 1977. Which month?"

"September," she said. "It was only the third week of term. Why?"

"So you don't remember dating me at all?" James asked, quietly. Lily shook her head. "Do you even like me?"

Lily opened her mouth to answer, then promptly closed it. How does she answer that? How does she look into his eyes, the eyes of her husband, and tell him that she doesn't love him? That she can barely imagine a relationship with him, let alone remember the past two years of it? But then again, that's not true, is it? Because she'd been imagining a whole lot of James the past few weeks...but if she couldn't admit that to herself then she sure as hell couldn't admit it to James himself, husband though he may be.

Instead, she focused on something else. "We started dating in seventy-seven?"

James nodded.

"Oh," Lily said, dumbly. She felt a blush creep up her neck. In three (or fewer) months from that day in potions, she ended up dating James Potter. It seemed impossible, but then again she woke up this morning with his arm around her waist.

She turned back to James. "Is this our house?" she asked, changing the subject. He nodded. "And do you three live here, too?"

Sirius actually laughed at the look on her face as she asked that. "No, you nixed that idea right out of the gate. Said you didn't want to spend your newlywed years in a "frap house"-"

"Frat," Remus supplied.

"-whatever that means. Remus has been in your guest bedroom for a few weeks, though."

"It's temporary," he said with a pained grimace.

"What about you, Peter?" Lily asked. Peter - who'd looked close to zoning out - snapped his attention to her.

"Oh, my mum's sick, so I'm living with her right now."

Lily nodded and was silent for a second before remembering something. "Wait - so why were you all here last night?"

James cleared his throat. "Well, you hit your head -"

"I think she's got that figured out by now, Prongs."

"- and since we didn't end up taking you to Mungo's, they stayed in case, er, things got worse."

They were silent after that, before Remus helpfully added, "You should probably go in now, you know."

James ended up taking her to the hospital, while the others left to attend to their own various responsibilities. They were walking silently along the side of the road - the nearest apparition spot a few blocks back from the hospital - when Lily decided to break the silence.

"I'm sorry you got stuck with me," she said. "You must have something better to do than cart an amnesiac around London."

He only looked confused. "You're my wife," he said simply.

"Oh, right."

James chuckled. "You forgot already?"

"It's not that I forgot, it's that...I keep forgetting to take it into account." James shot her another skeptical look. "It's like...I know I'm your wife, but only in the most basic sense. I keep forgetting that it means things like...that we live together. Or that you'll take me to the hospital, and probably help me fill out the forms when we get there, because you know my entire history. Or that we share finances...oh."

"What?" He stopped abruptly and gripped her shoulders, turning her toward him, her delicate condition and earlier confusion clearly at the forefront of his mind.

She simply grinned, then said: "I'm rich."

James' laughter was barklike. "You realize that you married me and that's the first thing that you're concerned about?"

Lily shrugged. "A girl's gotta eat." James laughed again.

"Well I'm glad you didn't lose your sense of humor, too."

Lily looked over at James and nearly stopped in her tracks. She'd spent a significant amount of time looking into James' eyes over the years - for varying reasons - and she's seen a lot of emotions in them. She'd seen them mischievous after a prank and she'd seen them exhausted after quidditch. She'd seen them jubilant, she'd seen them serious, she'd seen them sad. She'd even seen them shine - shine with laughter, shine with excitement, shine with anger. But never, in all her years, had she seen them shine like this.

Lily cleared her throat and pressed forward.

They spent three hours at St. Mungos' - one of them in the waiting room filling out papers, which James basically just filled out himself, claiming to be the "foremost Lily expert in the room", which earned him a jab in the side that he merely chuckled at. It then took an hour for the healers to run tests and scans of her brain, and another forty minutes to analyze the results. It only took a few minutes for the healers to tell them that everything looked perfectly fine.

"But it's obviously not. She thinks she's seventeen," said James, one hand wrapped around a styrofoam cup and the other on his hip, looking so much the part of the concerned husband that it was making Lily's head spin.

The Healer nodded. "Yes, based on what you said she is obviously experiencing some amnesia. What I'm saying is that there is nothing physically wrong on our scans."

"So...it's in her head?"

"It's possible, but rather unlikely, I think. The more likely scenario is that whatever damage the fall did was slight enough that it doesn't even register on the tests we're able to run. Which means this is likely very temporary." He turned to face Lily. "So, no brain damage. Just a little fogginess, and if it doesn't clear up in a few days, come back and see me then. Though I doubt you'll need to. Any more questions?"

"Uhh...no. I think you covered it all."

The healer smiled genially and patted her knee before leaving. Lily gathered up her things while James took care of her discharge paperwork.

The walk back was even more silent than the first one, though James did seem marginally less concerned than before. Despite the lack of a definitive answer, Lily was feeling reassured. All she had to do was wait for her memories to come back. Surely it couldn't take that long, not when the healer seemed so unconcerned.

When they got back to their house it was empty for the first time that Lily remembered, and it suddenly felt huge. The fact that she was going to live alone with James was finally starting to hit her. She'd never lived in a house with only two people. As a child, her house was filled with laughter, songs, and make believe; as a teenager, it was filled with arguments and shouting matches. And Gryffindor Tower, of course, was almost always lively. Now, she heard James' feet pad clearly across the room and felt the sudden powerful urge to make awkward small talk. She wished the other three would come back and break the tension.

She loitered in the sitting room (can you loiter in your own house?) while James disappeared into the kitchen. A few minutes later, the smells and sounds coming from his direction indicated that he was preparing dinner. Lily decided to go and help him.

She silently threw together the pasta sauce while he silently formed meatballs, and it was obvious that neither of them knew how to behave around the other. Lily wondered what was going through James' head right now. He seemed to be handling everything fairly calmly, but Lily suspected that was mostly an act.

Lily continued to stir the sauce long after it was necessary, attempting to look busy while James threw the meatballs in the oven and moved on to the pasta. After ten or so minutes of this, she noticed that James was staring at her whenever she wasn't looking. "So…" she said, turning to face him and biting the conversational bullet, "how long have we been married?"

It took James a second to realize she was addressing him now. "Oh, uh, a year next week, actually."

"Oh. So we...wow, we were only eighteen."

"Well, yeah."

"It didn't really occur to me before now, but...that's young. That's really, really young. Why did we get married so young?"

James' eyebrows furrowed, but only a bit, like he was trying to hide it.

"What?" Lily set her mixing spoon aside.

James sighed, but kept his attention on the pasta. "Listen, I...I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I know you don't remember...any of our relationship, so I'm not going to force it on you. Just...take your time. We can start over, or...just be friends, if that's what you really want. Though the marriage does complicate that a little bit."

"What are you saying?"

He turned toward her. "I'm saying that I'm not going to sit here and tell you how much I love you. Not if you don't...if you can't tell me the same."

Lily froze. Swallowing was suddenly a very hard thing to do and her face was feeling hotter by the second. Lily shouldn't be surprised to hear James say that he loved her, she'd already come to terms with the fact the he married her, but somehow hearing those word in his voice caught her completely off guard.

James chuckled. "Don't hurt yourself."

"I'm not."

"You look like your head is about to explode."

Lily covered her burning cheeks with her hands. "It must be the head injury. I'm fine."

James laughed, and for a moment Lily was sure something was about to happen. Whether it was the softness in his eyes as he looked at her, or a twitch in his hand that made Lily think he was about to reach out for her, but one for one fleeting second Lily was sure that they were going to kiss.

And for that same second, Lily was sure she was going to let it happen.

The kitchen timer pinged. Lily jumped, her hands falling sharply from her face, and James turned quickly toward the stove. It was like a bubble burst and let all the tension out of the room, leaving it with only the sound of nearby traffic, the clatter of raindrops signaling the start of a downpour, and an awkwardness that made Lily want to flee.

"Ready to eat?" James asked, turning back. Lily nodded numbly.

This was going to be a long night.