Not For Nothing
By Kimmy

Summary: The rain doesn't stop in time, but Lily and James have both waited too long.
Disclaimer: Don't own Harry Potter.
Notes: I really should stop writing when I have papers to do.

Rain. On their wedding day. They weren't surprised.

It had always rained for them, after all. In those days, the sting of cold against skin and against charmed windows seemed the only constant in their lives.

Her wedding gown – her gorgeous, white, expensive wedding gown – was drenched. Her red hair, slaved over for hours for what was meant to be a perfect day, was falling from its elegant bun. Her makeup, so meticulously applied, ran in sad streaks down the curves of her face.

They asked if she wanted to wait – "until the rain stops, at least – "

But she only replied with a smile and a soft, "It won't stop in time." She had waited too long, she'd say later, and the times were too uncertain to waste another second.

So she walked down the muddied aisle with a smile on her face. James was waiting for her at the end, and it was all she knew.

It was all she wanted to know for the rest of her life.

There he was, her beautiful fiancée, grinning from ear to ear, and not giving a damn that the rain had soaked straight through to his boxers. When she saw that smile – that wonderfully James smile – the rain vanished. The people vanished. Everything vanished, save for her and the man she loved. Because, really, she had wanted the whole world at her wedding. And he was her whole world.

And when she got close enough to see the red eyes behind his glasses, she wanted to laugh, for she never knew him to be one who cried at weddings.

Then she blinked her own tears away, and when she realized that the water tracing its way across her features were tears, and not just the rain...this time, she did laugh. She laughed at him, she laughed at herself. For she had never been one to cry at weddings, either.

And when she finally uttered the two words that would bind them together, her husband smiled, and the utter happiness she saw in his hazel eyes made up for all the grief they had suffered at the hands of the world. She knew that she had never known true beauty until that second.

Her husband murmured a captivated, "Finally," as he cupped her cheek. When he bent down to kiss her, he found her lips were slick with rain.

Did you catch the rain metaphor? If you didn't catch it, it's supposed to represent the war (or pain and sorrow). Now, to do my papers...