07/15/05: Hey, everyone. After this was deleted from fanfiction.net I definitely considered rewriting it. I look at some of these chapters and I think…what was I thinking? Was I thinking at all? I did considered redoing basically the entire first half, but then I thought…what's the point of writing if people can't see the growth? This was my first story and I've been writing it even when I've been writing other stories. This story shows the full range of my good and bad qualities. It gets better as it goes, and there's a strange kind of beauty in that. Perhaps one day, far in the future, I will rewrite this, but for now, I'm simply going to finish my baby. Also, for some reason I don't have Chapter 17 on my computer. If anyone has it, could you let me know? I do have a copy saved elsewhere, but I would like to get at it as soon as possible so I can post it.
01/02/03: IMPORTANT A/N: This fanfiction has been EDITED greatly. In fact, you should read it all over because it is completely different. I was very displeased with the way I was writing and I fixed it. I'm sure you will enjoy the changes. NOTHING WILL MAKE SENSE in future chapters if you do not READ THE ENTIRE FIC OVER AGAIN. Many elements have been changed, including the removal of several key characters and the changing of events from the past.
The prologue is very different as well.
You Can't Hurry Love
Prologue
**
Go on, a voice in his mind said. It was in your vault. You know you want to read it. It's just a silly book. See, there's a prologue. If you don't like it you don't have to read it.
He dropped his green eyes, so like his mother's, down to the parchment.
**
October 29, 1981
I think I spent my entire Seventh Year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry sad, grieving, or in anguish.
It was my most horrible year there, but my best as well. Because I fell in love.
I fell in love in a in a train station in completely clichéd moment because James was trying to be romantic.
I was not trying. It comes naturally!
Yes you were, James, now shut up!
Yes, James. James who I fell in love with, isn't that sweet? If I had told anyone that I was going to marry James one day, they would have put me in St. Mungo's.
He was out of my league.
Heir to one of the largest fortunes in wizarding Britain. A pureblood, Welsh member of the Potter family. God, he practically had blue blood! He was in a class all of his own, with a strange combination of Welsh and French background.
Oh, and I hated him with the intensity of a thousand suns.
And unfairly, as well. I wasn't as bad as you thought.
Hello, it's James. Lily's just cranky because she didn't get any sleep. I wonder why?
Shut up, Potter.
Why don't you shut up, Potter?
Grr.
Gotcha.
Fuck you.
You just did, about, oh, say…two hours ago. Hence the whole not sleeping thing. You do realize it's around two in the morn-
Grr.
Er, I'll just go do some laundry, then?
Grr.
Eep! Ack, no Lily! Put the quill down! Ack! Nooooooooo!
Well then, let me continue. My relationship with James started off rocky because-well, because. That and the fact that I practically was the cause of his dad dying. But our Seventh Year…
I had friends who were female, amazing friends. Their names were Sunny and Ana. But they were not always with me.
See, deaths were coming in by the bucketful with Voldemort on the loose, and it wasn't unnatural to lose a friend or two. I know it sounds callous and horrible, but it's true. I haven't met a person who hasn't lost someone to Voldemort. But we, James and I, lost so much, because of who we are, and what our destinies proclaim we will do.
This is our story. You'll smile and laugh and you'll think we're utterly stupid for not seeing what was in front of us for seven years. But…you will cry, oh will you cry.
And through your tears, hope, for one day, good shall prevail.
Lily Evans Pot-
Lily won't really put this in the book because I got the best of her. She'll write the prologue over. It is, after all, a rough draft.
Whoever finds this, (because I know a hundred years from now when I'm old and gray haired I'll vaguely recall writing it, but I won't know where it is) realize that desperate times call for desperate measures. Lily's book which tells the story of our seventh year from both our perspectives cannot be published until Voldemort is dead. We cannot come out of hiding. We can not draw to ourselves.
Perhaps it is for the best.
We both fiercely love our son and we won't let any harm come to him. We'll die first. We'll do anything to save our child, present and future. All of us will, including my friends. Sirius, Remus, and Peter are the truest friends I could have asked for. They are the most loyal people alive and I know, within me, past all my doubts and logical sense, that none of them will ever betray us. None of them will ever give us away. Not truly. We'll always be in the back of their minds. They're always in the back of mine.
I'm not going to play mind games with myself. I'm going to die. I won't live to be a hundred and twenty. But I'm not scared of dying. Because I know that I'll live on. Lily will live on. We'll live on through our son.
Harry.
Green eyes and messy hair. He's me with Lily's eyes. If the git is still teaching at Hogwarts, he'll be so surprised he may just wash his hair.
God, James, I love you.
I love you too.
James and Lily Potter.
**
Harry Potter set down the piece of parchment…and wept.