The Flowers in James’s Ribs

jiilys:

A/N :  Mentions suicide so if that isn’t your thing then the next thing will be happier, promise. For  @picassowasblue because she likes badass Lily as much as me  ///

Eliza Potter is not stupid.

She’s almost seven now, and can put the bread in the toaster without Sirius picking her up, so she can see that James is friends with the pretty new neighbour. 

And she is pretty, as in, interesting pretty. Like she looks like she could punch someone in the mouth, which Eliza actually saw her do one time to Jimmy Ogden during school when he told her to turn around for him. Eliza isn’t scared of her though, because once she fell over when she was riding her bike on the sidewalk outside the house and the pretty girl ran over and helped her up. The girl said that her name was Lily and helped Eliza inside. James smiled when she opened the door even though Eliza’s knee was bleeding into her sock.

James smiles a lot when she’s around, Eliza’s noticed. She tells Lizzy, her best friend, and Lizzy snorts, and says seventeen year old boys don’t smile a lot. And Lizzy would know, she has twin brothers who are seventeen and is the only one in the class who has a raincoat without any mud on it. Lizzy just understands these things. But James really does smile a lot when the girl- Lily- is around. Like when he was mowing the lawn and she waved at him from where she was picking flowers in her yard. James nearly took his foot off when he tried to wave back and Eliza remembers Mummy yelling at him to watch her flippin’ hydrangeas.

But Lily really is nice, plus she has cool hair. Eliza once asked who poured all of that red paint on her head and Lily laughed while James glared and told her not to be such a nerd. But it really did look like paint on Lily’s head, and when she told Eliza that it was just how her hair was. Eliza got annoyed; because she wanted hair that looked like blood so that she could scare sway stupid Fabian Weasley who keeps staring at her in class. Lily laughed again and said that she liked Eliza’s black hair, that black hair was really cool. James smiled really hard when she said that.

Lily is painting her fence on Saturday and James gets out of bed at nine in the morning (he never gets up that early, not even for cartoons) to help her. Eliza brings them sandwiches that she made herself and when she walks over James is talking, “…Yeah but that technically didn’t count as a suspension because Mum never found out about it, she would have fucking shot me if- oh, hi, ‘Liza”. Lily is grinning when Eliza hands her the pickle and jam sandwich. If she really thinks about it, Lily smiles a lot when James is around too. 

Lily also has a sister, but Eliza doesn’t like her at all, because she yells at her when she’s riding her bike on the road and she made Lily cry that one time, when they were outside and the mean sister said that she hated her. Lily cried and Eliza wanted to hit the other girl, because she didn’t have nice red hair or pretty eyes and she hurt Lily. But she didn’t, because mum said she shouldn’t eavesdrop anymore and she was meant to be practising her printing.

But she can tell Sirius about Lily, because Sirius is the best at listening and he likes her pickle and jam sandwiches. Sirius grins so big his face might fall off and says he won’t tell anyone, but she hears him teasing James about it later. Oh well, James deserved it. He called her a nerd.

Lily comes over a lot more now, sitting on the couch watching TV with James and sometimes he even lets Eliza watch with them. Lily leans on James’s knees and Eliza leans on Lily’s knees and it’s like a cool kneeling train. She likes it, because she gets to see James and Lily, who are her favourite people in the whole world. Along with Padfoot, Moony, Wormy and Mummy, of course. Eliza thinks her Dad might have been one of her favourite people to, even though he’s in the ground with the stone on top. Mummy says he was really sad and couldn’t take it anymore. Eliza still doesn’t know what ‘it’ is, but she’s going to find out and punch it, because it makes Mummy sad and James all quiet whenever they talk about Daddy.       

She tells Lily this while she’s waiting for James to get back from Remus’s house and Lily gets really sad, so Eliza tells her not be and gives her a hug, because she doesn’t like it when Lily is sad, it makes her hurt inside.

James comes to her that night and asks if she’s ever sad about Dad, so Lily must have told, but Eliza doesn’t mind because she and James stay up all night talking about him, and Eliza likes that because talking to James is nice. James is her favourite person to talk to ever, she thinks. She tells him so and he hugs her. James is the second best huger, next to Sirius, of course.

She tells Lily this and she says she must test that theory sometime. Eliza doesn’t know what a theory is but she sees Lily hug James a few weeks later after they do their big people school homework in his room. That makes James smile a lot, and he doesn’t even yell at Eliza when she tells him she broke his headphones by accident.

On the day that they always go and visit Daddy’s grave Lily comes with them, Mummy never goes. She just stays in bed and won’t make Eliza breakfast like normal, so James does it. But he’s really quiet and puts too much milk on the cornflakes, so it’s not the same. They borrow Peter’s car because it’s nicer and they drive to the rock in the ground with “ROBERT ELLIOT POTTER’ written on it in big letters. Eliza gets to put the flowers that they brought down, and she arranges them in a smiley face so that maybe, wherever he is, Daddy won’t be so sad anymore. Lily holds James’s hand and Eliza holds Lily’s other hand and it’s like when they kneel on each other on the couch but not fun. Not fun at all.

Lizzy tells her James wants to kiss Lily and Eliza tells her that’s gross, because kissing is yuck and you aren’t allowed to do it until you’re at least twenty-one. That’s what James, Padfoot and Moony all told her. Lizzy tells her she’s just a big baby and Eliza punches her in the mouth just like Lily did to Jimmy Ogden, because Lizzy’s always calling her a baby now and just because she wears a raincoat without mud on it doesn’t mean she’s the queen of the world. And she still doesn’t feel bad about it when she’s sent home early and Mummy yells at her. She tells Lily what Lizzy said and Lily goes really red and mixes up all her words, which is weird because Lily never does that.

One night the phone rings in the middle of the night and Eliza answers, because the phone is on the desk right outside her room and it’s Lily on the other end. She’s crying a lot and tells her to just go get James please and Eliza is really scared because she sounds really sad and what is she’s so sad that she leaves like Daddy. Eliza doesn’t want to see Lily’s name a stone in the ground so she runs to get James really fast. James is mad when she wakes him up but Eliza shoves the phone at him and watches him as he talk to Lily. He says things like, “Calm down” and “I’ll be right there” and then he’s putting on his t-shirt and running for his car. He says he won’t take Eliza and that makes her mad because she wants to see Lily and give her a hug and tell her to not leave, please, because Lily is hers and she loves her a lot. She tells James not to let Lily leave forever and James looks at her real hard and promises he won’t. And then it’s okay, because James doesn’t lie to her, ever. So it’s okay.

Eliza asks Remus why Lily was crying when he comes over the next day because Remus is smart and knows how to explain things so that they make sense, he always helps her with the stupid math homework so he will help her understand why Lily called in the middle of the night. Remus looks at James for a minute and James just gets up and leaves, which is confusing. Remus tells Eliza that Lily had been at a big people party and one of the boys had tried to hurt her, so she called James to come and get her. Eliza asks if James punched they boy and Remus smiles, saying he doesn’t know, but he should have. Remus then makes her promise to tell him or Peter or Sirius or James if a boy ever tries to hurt her and Eliza does, because why wouldn’t she tell? Peter, Remus, Sirius and James are her best friends, even better than Lizzy. Remus hugs her when she tells him this and she hugs him back, because Remus is the third best hugger of all time.

Lily gets a rabbit and Eliza likes to go over and pet him, but when James tries the bunny bites him and Lily laughs so hard that she falls into her pool. She pulls James in by his foot and he yells and gets really wet. Eliza laughs because they’re laughing and then James is pushing Lily’s head under the water and Lily is splashing him and Eliza is grinning and grinning because her older brother is laughing and Lily wasn’t lying about her hair, because the paint doesn’t come out in water so it must be real.

James gets asked by Lily to go to her mean older sister’s wedding and when he leaves in his fancy pants and jacket, Sirius stays and watches cartoons with her. Watching cartoons with Sirius is fun, because he yells funny things at the characters and makes popcorn. Sirius says that James might be in love with Lily. Eliza doesn’t know what that means, because she loves Sirius, so is she in love with him? Sirius laughs and pauses the Power Puff girls. Then he looks at Eliza real hard which means he wants to tell her something really important so she looks back at him and tries to look like she’s listening really hard, because she is.

Sirius says being in love and loving someone isn’t the same, because Sirius loves her but isn’t in love with her. Eliza still doesn’t understand and wishes Remus was there to explain it, but Sirius keeps talking. He says that being in love with someone is when your ribcage feels like a flower garden whenever the other person is around. Eliza doesn’t know what a ‘ribcage’ is but she likes flower gardens and hopes that James has one in his body always, so she says she doesn’t mind if James is in love with Lily, just as long as they don’t kiss until they’re  twenty one, because that is illegal. Sirius smiles and tells her she’s right. Then he makes popcorn and uses lots of salt, just like how he knows she likes it.

When James gets home later Eliza walks up to him and tells him it’s alright if he’s in love with Lily. James stares at her for a minute and then throws his wallet at Sirius’s head, who catches it and smiles, chewing on the nice mint gum that he gave Eliza a piece of.

A lot of days later, she sees James and Lily kissing on the sidewalk. But she doesn’t call the police, because James is smiling when he pulls back and Lily flicks him on the nose and laughs. Eliza lets them do it this one time, but next time she really will call the police. Because she’s not stupid and Peter told her that if she kisses anyone before she’s twenty-one she will have to go to jail. And Remus said they don’t have the Power Puff girls in jail. And that would suck.