Epilogue
I took the river’s advice. At this point, I didn’t have a choice.
That same afternoon on the day James vanished I pulled on my heaviest coat and walked into the steady rain. Faint rolls of thunder greeted me as I crossed the street into a deserted corner behind my flat. It was crowded with rubbish bins and broken crates because it used to be an ally to a store that had once been next to the building. In other words, no one would see a woman disappearing within the blink of an eye.
The mustiness of the gray day dampened the little motivation I had. It would be so easy to turn back, but I couldn't. Not now. Not now that I understood James had truly left me.
I had no one else to turn to but myself.
Within a second I was facing a small forest off a northern motorway near Surrey. The wood was unchanged since the last time I had been there: its towering oaks and mossy hills spread out before me as an old friend, grown old from progress happenings outside its depths, as though it were untouchable by such things as time.
I knew I’d find answers there.
Come, come, it says, Come and we’ll answer your questions, just like when you were a little girl.
Will you? Will you give me real, full, everything answers?
Everything is such a small word, they murmur.
I walk towards the lofty trees’ whispers, the gentle rain stroking their leaves and causing them to sparkling like tears. Their branches moved in the whistling wind, stretching and pointing out the way for me.
I soon found the bank where my father and I had played, frozen in time like the rest of the woods. It was located on an isolated spot at the edge of the dense forest, and the little river ran just as musically as it had done when my seven year-old fingers splashed its depths. A willow’s leaves trailed over into it just like my fingers had, and as I turned, I saw the old Willow - its gnarled, wispy, and dignified figure standing behind me.
Ghosts of the past crept over the still bank, their soft voices flowing in the wind... and I stood, my breath caught in my throat, as I saw all that I had wanted to forget…
The ghost of a little girl, her bright, fire-red hair done up in pigtails, ran toward the Willow. She grasped its wrinkled bark with her small hands, bouncing and laughing. Then a man, in his thirties, rushed up to her, his sheer figure panting but laughing as well. Their game had finished at the tree, and the girl had won, her triumph expressed in hugging her father with delight.
“Got here, first Daddy!”
This vision evaporated into one of the same girl, this time older, her eyes dreamy and her lips spread into a smooth smile. An air of happiness and satisfaction with the world around her danced with the castles in the air that drifted over her head…
Before I could utter a word, the apparition drifted into another, this one of the same girl, her hair darkened into a deep auburn, her green eyes glistening with hope as she walked along the bank. She patted her left palm with the broken stick she was holding in rhythm with her steps…
One, two, one, two, one step, two steps…wandering, never taking a thought to where she was going…traveling where the larking wind pulled her, where the rushing water pointed her to…
Gasping, I clasped a hand to my mouth, muffling my words. “I remember this.”
How could I have forgotten? This was the night when James had left for Auror training, the night before the Death Eaters’ visit at home. I had wanted to get away from Petunia’s bragging about her fiancé, away from my parents planning a wedding shower for her…
And I came here, because this was where I had felt more like myself than anywhere else, even in James’ arms.
“One, two, one, two,” the girl’s ghost murmured, her stick echoing. She treaded the bank’s muddy sides with bare feet, coming toward me. My eyes fluttered closed with memory as she drifted through me and stopped at the Willow.
“No matter where I go,” the girl said to herself, examining the stick before tossing it aside and examining the Willow with a smile, “I’ll always come back here, where I hid my hopes and dreams. They’ll never go away, will they, Willow? Point me in the direction I’ll take to go back home.”
The wind rustled the Willow’s leaves and branches, and the girl followed their direction with curious eyes as they aimed my way.
Then she disappeared into the mist that was crawling its path over the forest.
What are my dreams, my heart asks into the air. What are my hopes? I don’t remember them. Did they flee from here? Did they leave when they saw I wouldn’t come back for them?
I pulled my wet hair back, rain still coming down around me, almost protecting.
Didn’t anyone ask that? What do we do when we’ve lost ourselves? There’s no lost and found box. And the future holds empty promises for someone who doesn’t have a past.
I remembered last night’s dream, and then recalled what the forest had just reminded me of. My past. Maybe it’s not as scary as I thought it was. Was it really responsible for what happened to my parents, to Gwen, to me?
One thing I felt that I knew for sure. My family wouldn’t want me to die, too.
The empty room in my heart began to swell with the memories that started to knock on its door, and a small smile came to my lips. How could I forget what my past offered to me: the sweet memories of my loving father and stepmother, of Gwen’s vivacious laughter, of my love for everything that grew?
Just like this forest. This forest that is prodding me, urging me, pushing me to remember who I was.
I was that playful little girl. I was the dreaming young teenager. And I was the hopeful, curious, yet determined young woman that asked the Willow to show her the way home. Because, after all, none of us are sure of how to go back. Trekking into what we know is sometimes scarier than going into the unknown. Without someone to show us the way, we wouldn’t know how to go forwards or how to go back.
And then I knew what I had to do with what I had left of my hopes and dreams.
-----
“Lily, I assure you we’ll do our very best."
I swallowed thickly as I saw Gwen, white as marble with her honey brown curls spread around her face. “You’re my last hope, Fabian. Muggle doctors have done all they can…if you can’t “”
Fabian Prewett shook his head, giving me his usual crooked smile that reminisced of our old days at Hogwarts together. “Untrusting as ever, I see. Well, let me put it to you this way: since the outbreak of the war, I’ve worked plenty on cases like your cousin. Shocked and comatose because of the Cruciatus curse’s effects “ it’s not abnormal at all. I mean, two years ago, we didn’t have a chance of treating cases like hers. But with all of this new research lately,” he added, arching his dark brown eyebrows at me, “We’re getting cases like Gwen’s cured.”
My eyes lit up, and I broke into my first genuine smile in two years. “Really?”
Fabian grinned, patting me on the back. “Really.”
I turned, my whole body more fully alive than it’s ever been, and headed out of Gwen’s room at St. Mungo’s. Just as my hand reached for the brass doorknob, Fabian called, “Hey, Lily.”
“Yes?” I asked, turning around.
“Welcome back to the magical world,” Fabian said quietly. “We’ve missed you.”
Smiling again, I nodded. “It’s great to be back home.”
I walked out of the hospital, my head held high once again, the colors of the world sharpened and thriving around me. Inhaling a revitalizing gulp of air, I breathed in the Lily I had lost, and she sank into me.
But something was still missing. My eyes trailed over the bustling London street, the chattering of the crowd, the whines of cars and trucks, and the crashes of construction work that deafened to my ears. An optometrist’s office was across the street from me, its cheesy advertisement sign in the shape of giant glasses, staring at me.
If I ask you to, will you come back, James?
If I ask you to, will you love the new Lily?
-----
He came back.
And that’s the first thing I remember. At least, after I woke up to find my reality and fantasies dissolved together, like twilight is mixed from night and daylight. Just enough light to see, but also to dream as well.
I achingly melted into him, yearning for everything that he offered me in our soaring kiss… the everything he had promised to me and that I now reclaimed once again. This time, I was ready. I wasn't perfect - and I never wanted to be again.
James offered me much more than 'everything.' He knew me better than anyone else, save for my parents and Gwen…I had found myself through their help, but I couldn’t have done it without James’s love that overflowed me, like a refreshing sea wave that turned me inside out and exposed my fears and hopes nakedly on the warm beach under the light of his eyes.
He knew me - and he let me go, watching with a wide grin as I walked away, treading the caressing ocean’s gentle surf flowing beneath my wandering bare feet. As I walked away - far enough to be myself, close enough to be with him - he reminded me of what I should always remember.
I am Lily, and that's all I or anyone else needs to know.