InsaneJournal

Characters: Lily Evans, James Potter, Sirius Black, various NPCs
Setting: Hospital Wing, night of Saturday, 23 October
Content: PG-13
Summary: James wakes up!...only something's a little off.


Lily had realised...well, about a month ago, really, that she cared a great deal for James Potter. It intensified when the pair of them got together, but it took her until this incident for all the implications of that to hit her. Sure, caring about someone was all well and good when the pair of you were both happy, but when the other person is lying in a hospital bed, well, that has an effect on you. For Lily, it meant she was positively sick with worry all the time, from that night when Professor McGonagall had woken her up, until now.

At first, she had thought it would be temporary. Yes, James looked absolutely awful as a result of what the Whomping Willow had done, but the Healers said that he wasn't in any real danger, and he should be awake soon. Then, the deadline they had given him had passed, by an hour, six hours, twelve hours, a day, two days, three. The sick feeling in Lily's stomach only increased as time passed, and she was fairly certain she would have actually gone mad if not for Sirius.

Perhaps that was a strange thing for her to think, considering that Sirius Black was usually more involved in driving her mad, but it was true. He understood precisely how she felt to see James lying in that bed, and not only that, but as he had told her the day before, he was blaming himself on top of it. He'd been there for Lily when she cried, he'd completely reassured her when she found an apparently faked love letter from James to Mary MacDonald in the common room, and she wasn't sure she could have handled all of this without his support. In addition, she knew James would be glad to see the pair of them getting on when he woke up.

If he woke up, that is. Lily certainly hadn't seen much of a change in him, except that his bruises and wounds had gradually healed. Of course, that was not including the fact that the Healers had taken James off of most of his pain potions to try and wake him up, starting Friday evening. For the last day, James had appeared to be in a great deal of pain, which had only made Lily, Sirius, and James' parents more upset and on edge than they had been before.

At the moment, things were relatively tranquil, the sort of awful normalcy that the four of them had fallen into. Madam Pomfrey had checked on James about five minutes ago, and nothing had changed for him. The more-or-less permanent residents of the room were avoiding looking at him in his painful state as much as possible. Mr. and Mrs. Potter-or Charlus and Dorea, as they had asked Lily to call them-were having a quiet discussion over the Evening Prophet, and Lily was beating Sirius at wizard's chess, though only by a little. She tended to win their games often because he made rash moves and she was more strategic.

Out of nowhere, James made a noise. The four immediately turned to look at him, but after a moment of tense silence, returned to what they had been doing. This had happened several times since the removal of his pain potions, so it in itself was no cause for alarm, but they all looked at James whenever it did, just in case.

Suddenly, it happened again, and then his eyes opened.

Lily and Sirius were sitting closer, and Lily was faster, but only by a second. She took James' hand, and on his other side, Sirius had snatched his glasses off the nightstand and slipped them on his face, well familiar with how blind his best mate was. As Dorea and Charlus rushed towards the bed themselves, Lily asked, "James? Are you awake?" the hope in her voice clear, but desperation biting at the edges of it as well. There wasn't much more she could take.