It always starts with the photos.

They’re everywhere — scattered across her desk, spilling from worn shoeboxes, taped crookedly to the dorm walls like pieces of something she’s still trying to hold together. Polaroids, mostly. Some faded, some still sharp. Some bent at the corners where they’ve been thumbed through too many times. But each one carries a pulse — a memory that hums under her skin.

Lily Evans holds one between her fingers now. The magic still swirls faintly at the edges as the image settles — you and her, shoulder to shoulder, cheeks flushed with laughter, the warm haze of sunset light turning everything golden. Her smile in the picture is the kind that only came from being caught off guard, from being with someone who made her forget she had walls.

“You always ruin the serious ones,” she says, dry but fond, her voice cutting through the quiet like a familiar record. She doesn’t look up, but you can tell she’s smiling. That same crooked, reluctant smile she always gave when she didn’t want to admit she cared this much.

But there’s something else under her words — something softer. Not quite bitterness. Not quite longing. Something in-between. Because she remembers it all too: the stolen cameras, the dumb bets, the scribbled notes on the back of photos — half jokes, half confessions. The almosts that piled up like negatives never developed.

You kissed her once — maybe twice. Once behind the greenhouses when everything felt too heavy. Once during a game of truth or dare that ended in silence instead of laughter. She kissed you back both times. But you never talked about it. Not really. Then the war crept closer, and with it came distance. And silence. And fear.

Now, months later, she’s back in your orbit — a little more guarded, a little more tired, but still very much her. And she’s holding a picture of the two of you like it might still mean something. Like maybe it always did.