AN: I'm actually really fond of this one. Written for the Jily AU week! Happy reading! x

She should have known something strange was going to happen.

She should have, but she didn't, because by then she was convinced that life was just funny like that, that it could easily pull tricks on people when it felt like it. You woke up feeling funny one day—nothing hurt, nothing's missing, nothing like that at all, just… funny. Different. And it could mean everything, really, it could mean life's finally pulling itself together for you, a bunch of other endless possibilities, just wait and see—but it could also mean nothing.

So Lily Evans, who was fond of neither disappointment nor trying to get over it, didn't expect. She ignored—as there was no other phrase more apt in this case—all the signs.

Funny.

Still. The person she faced in the mirror looked like a stranger that day. Red hair, green eyes, pale skin. The ridges of her collar bones, the birthmark on her neck… she felt weird about them. Exceptionally aware or something. The sight bothered her, or maybe it was the feeling of looking at it; either way, she tied her hair up with a frown and went about her usual morning routine with pursed lips and furrowed eyebrows. Even the house smelled different. Same chilly morning, same well-trodden grassy path up to the High Street. But it wasn't the same. The rusty lamp posts lining up the pavement demanded her attention, the flowers peeking out of high-fenced gardens were all too colourful. Dew skittered down blades of grass, catching light. The morning breathed. Whispered. Tried to say something.

She didn't listen. But it doesn't matter. What was going to happen was going to happen, whether she stopped to strain her ears or not.

She felt it, though. Like her soul rattled with every step, tugged at her heart, tingled down her spine. And that was enough.

The train station wasn't that crowded when she arrived. She had a habit of checking her watch too often in a minute while waiting for the train. Her route was a worn-down mantra bouncing around her head: three stations to the west, five-minute walk to the campus from that station, an endless loop of parallel tracks and parallel days. She sighed. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and stared across the train tracks to the opposite platform. No spectacular view, just the same old people milling about. She'd seen a couple of them before, on the same days and the same time, people with lifelines that might look a lot like the ones drawn on her palms. Intersecting weekdays, awkward meeting glances, passing smiles. She wondered if going east would feel the same as going west. Or if any of them recognized her the way she recognized them—that couple just a few years older than her over there, she with the gum and he with the protective one-arm hug; that other girl, blonde and middle-aged and always guarded; that old woman with her colourful scarves and bright red bag; that messy-haired boy with glasses who had a habit of constantly looking down the tracks, gaze jumping and grazing over the rusty path onto the foggy bend on the road ahead, impatient or excited or just perpetually unable to stay still. He was doing it again, she noticed, bouncing up and down the balls of his feet to lean over and peek through the glaring rising sun, his spectacles filling with light—

Her heartbeat sped up, and her grip on her bag strap tightened. This was it, she thought, but what it was, she had no idea. But this was it. Her whole body felt like it was loosening up, untangling itself from a dormant coil, like she'd been holding her breath all this time for this moment, and now it was time to breathe, or wake up, or—

His gaze shifted, just like she knew—expected? waited?—it would. He found her. He stilled—it was odd, watching him frozen like that, for he always, always moved—eyes narrowing and singling Lily out from the crowd. Her hands felt clammy in her pockets, mouth open slightly in shock and of their own accord. Everything was still—or maybe that was just her, because the whole world was spinning beneath her feet and hurrying up in quick, hazy flashes—

The train going east arrived two seconds before the one going west did, and as the windows blurred him out from view and hurried past, a humming mirror of carriages, she saw it. She saweverything. She saw herself, standing there flabbergasted, coat and bag and boots and pocketed hands and all, but also robes, and a wand, and a red and gold striped tie. Letters carried by owls and a ceiling that mimicked the sky outside. Torch-lit corridors, scarlet four-poster beds, a hissing cat in the dead of the night. Pumpkin patches, summer-kissed swing sets, rolls of parchment. Ink-stained fingers tracing her clavicles in the dark. Lips that sometimes tasted like mint, sometimes like coffee, sometimes wine. But always like all four seasons at once—

James?

Hands that roamed, promises made at dawn, the splash of rain around her feet—

James!

Raucous laughter, rolled-up sleeves, loosened ties—

James. James Potter.

The train stopped, the doors opened with the usual hiss. All the chatter and the moving mass of bodies were distracting, but she didn't step in. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe—

A streak of green light, a crying infant, a house that shivered in the autumn night, fractured and silently grieving—

The train grated on the tracks, reluctant to go, groaning and wheezing its futile protests against the eager morning—

And then it was gone, its last cries echoing in the air, and the moment was over.

Lily stood there in utter bemusement. Her eyes stung—was she crying? Why was she crying? She wiped her damp cheeks and looked around, wondering why on earth did she not get on the train. She was alone now. She looked at her watch. Funny, that was the longest time she went without checking it. She must have zoned out. She really should stop staying up so late on weekdays…

She looked across the tracks. The platform was empty. No couple, no scarf-obsessed traveler, no stiff woman, no lanky bespectacled boy. The train bound east was just turning around the corner, and she watched it disappear into the sunrise's gaping mouth.

Her next train would arrive in ten minutes. Bugger. She was going to be late.

She started thinking of excuses for tardiness, and her stream of thought was broken by a light tap on her shoulder.

She whirled around. It was messy-haired boy. She noted how he was so much taller up close.

"Yes?"

But he just blinked at her. "Erm…"

He was confused about something. He ran a free hand through his hair, and her breath caught in her throat.

"Sorry, have we met before?" she asked, the same time he decided to say: "Sorry, it's just you look really familiar."

That last word, 'familiar', hung at the end of their sentences, suspending them both in limbo as time wrapped itself around everything, never missing an inch, making sure the rest of the world went about doing its usual business.

There was a pause, and then all around them the morning smiled as they both finally broke out in hearty chuckles. Smoke swirled up from a thousand coffee cups, sunlight carpeted the fields, roses bloomed to the muted sound of busy feet shuffling across a pedestrian crossing a few blocks away.

Here, in limbo—or this insignificant train station, a small corner of a far-flung parallel world, you take your pick—James Potter held out a hand. "I'm James."

Lily Evans took it. His fingers were warm and familiar and perfect. "Lily."

They shook, they smiled, and Lily reckoned it all felt like (no, it was, I swear it was) magic.