James Potter (buckoff) wrote in daysthatwere, @ 2012-10-31 18:16:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | james potter |
El Fin
Who: James Potter
When: Halloween Night, mid-evening
What: The end of the line.
Warnings: Character death
James Potter was very aware of his body in the moment before he died. His breath, going in and out, his heart rattling in his chest like it was a monster ready to burst out. His lightheaded stumble, his adrenaline pushing through the haze of terror that Voldemort was here, his wand was there, Lils was in the kitchen and he tried to remember where his journal was, maybe, so that Sirius or Peter or Remus or--
He’d eaten too many pumpkin ice mice earlier, gorging himself on treats instead of the roast chicken that Lily had cooked (too dry) and the potatoes he had roasted (underdone). They would never be good cooks, he acknowledged; they were used to making do. Switch homes every few months? No problem. Make every trip for groceries into a wartime initiative? The Potters had it covered. Disappear into water-color stains of their former vibrancy, avoiding friends and acquaintances out of concern that anyone might be aiming to kill them? Already done, my friend, already done.
James ate too many sweets even when it wasn’t a holiday, but he was only a kid. He still had that gangly, too-long look of the newly-stretched; he had spots from time to time, too. Harry hadn’t been planned, but he’d been a happy surprise, even if James kept a sliver of terror locked up somewhere behind his smile. Babies having babies, some would say, but he and Lils were powerful and bold. No one was going to tell them no. If they got questioned, the answer was a laugh (he'd learned that bit from Sirius, ages ago). James hadn’t done anything he hadn’t wanted to in school and that hadn’t changed, not one bit, not for all the world, because he told himself and others as much as he could that he wanted to be smothered under the war’s oppressive hand, he liked being silenced for fear of what might come rapping at his window, he loved waiting for the gentleman caller with the sickle and the black cloak knowing each morning when he got up that here I am, breathing again and he hadn’t been called on quite just yet.
Lils would never die. James couldn’t imagine her dead, even though he tried to imagine it sometimes in the worst-case scenario: her being killed and him being left to raise Harry on his own. No, Lils was too warm, too steady. Her pulse fluttered under his hand sometimes; her breath moved against his neck in a pliant in and out. She stole bedcovers in the night, defiant even in sleep. He couldn’t picture her lying truly still; he couldn’t imagine her in a coffin. The thought was hilarious. Lils lying there, mourners surrounding her, and here she’d pop up with a grin on her face like some macabre girl coming out of a cake. Lils never could keep a straight face when telling a joke – one of the many things he loved about her. No, Lils would never die, he was sure. She would never die. James burned hot and fierce like a forest fire and he was prepared to imagine himself being extinguished, but his wife was a light that would never go out. You could leave her in the window and guide the sailors home, warm and safe and easy.
Voldemort was here. Nausea pulled him back into the present in a cold shiver and gave him an eagle-eye view of the moments to come. James’s wand was on the table, and Voldemort was there, he was already there, gliding toward him with the ghastly grace of an eel. How did he get in? How did he find them? The Fidelius. Wormtail. And that hurt worse than the realization that he was about to die. But that was neither here nor there nor here and now; now had this dark wizard moving to him with a snake of a smile on his face.
“Lily!” James heard himself shout; his voice hurt. Sore throat; he’d told Lily earlier he was getting a cold. “Take Harry and go! It’s him!” And something was so impossibly funny as he heard his voice rise (there was his wand on the table; too far away to be useful, and there was that staggering terror again). He didn’t know how he sounded so calm - “I’ll try to hold him off!” he cried, oh, his wand, there it was, “just go!”
Bravado. Another word for being a windbag, and that was what James was in that moment – a body of air and water and junk and parts, still working, still able to function through many more years, though eventually he would get arthritis from a Quidditch injury in his hands, and a premature baldness in his thirties thanks to genetics, and a soreness in his knees like any man, like any person. And Lils, Lils would have that red hair forever, he thought to himself as he saw Voldemort raise his wand and move those loathsome lips. He heard her running behind him, heard the creak of the stairs take her weight (fourth stair down; he’d said he would fix it and never had), and he had to smile, because there went Lily. She could run with the best of them. She never stopped going, she never gave up. Lils would last forever, he thought to himself, and as the years went on, she would turn round and crinkled and would teach Harry the best of things, the important things. Harry wouldn’t be tall; he’d be thin and bright-eyed and awkward, awkward as James still was, and he’d be clever and kind and brave. James grieved for the son he would never see grow up, for the wife he would never see grow old.
When the rush of green light came for him, he thought of their eyes, and tried to smile.