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One day at a time.

Notes: What happens when the past finds you on an ordinary morning? James Potter x Female Reader. Hurt/Comfort kinda. WC: 4.8k Navigation.

Perhaps it had been the way he looked at you, even after so many years, after everything that had happened between the two of you, he still had the ability to make you feel exactly the way you used to. It was weird, though not in the way one feels when running into an ex with whom things ended badly. There was no resentment, no anger, none of that awkwardness that forces two people to pretend they never knew each other.

It was the kind of weird that made you forget, for a second, how many years had passed since the last time you saw him, and made your heart leap unexpectedly inside your chest.

You were supposed to be over that stage of your life by now, James Potter was supposed to be nothing more than a part of your past, a memory that surfaced every now and then when a song came through your headphones or when you stumbled across an old photograph.

So, you certainly hadn't expected to find him there at 8:33 in the morning. You knew the exact time because you had just checked your phone while waiting for your name to be called so you could pick up your coffee. It was part of your routine. Every morning before work, you stop at the same café, order exactly the same thing, and sit by the window if you have enough time.

The café was only a few blocks from the office where you had worked since graduating from university and moving to the city. You came there almost every day; even the barista knew your order by heart because it was part of your safe, predictable routine.

You had walked in with your mind occupied by emails and unfinished projects. You weren't paying attention to anyone around you. That's why, when you glanced up from your phone while waiting for your coffee and saw him standing there on the other side of the café, it took several seconds for your brain to process that it was really him. James Potter.

Your James.

Or at least the man who had once been yours.

At first, you thought you were mistaken. After all, years passed without seeing him or hearing his voice, but it was him.

For several seconds, neither of you moved. You stood frozen, one hand gripping the strap of your bag while he looked at you.

Then he smiled. He had changed, his face was more mature now, his features sharper, his shoulders seemed broader beneath the dark coat he was wearing.

Life had moved forward for both of you. You have taken different paths, met different people, built entirely new versions of yourselves. You graduated, found a job, moved away from home, and learned how to live on your own, and yet, as you watched him rise from his seat and walk toward you, a part of you felt all those years disappear.

James made his way through the small crowd gathered near the counter, and for a moment the murmur of the café faded away completely. The only thing left was the sound of his shoes against the wooden floor.

"Wow..." he said when he stopped less than a meter away. His voice was deeper than you remembered. "It's really you."

You tried to react, forcing your vocal cords to produce a sound. "James," you managed, and your own voice sounded strange to your ears. "Hi."

"Hi," he replied, his eyes behind his glasses studying your face. "You look... incredible. Seriously."

"Thanks. You look... different," you said, adjusting your bag on your shoulder.

"Is that a subtle way of saying I'm getting old?" he joked.

The tension in your shoulders eased immediately. God, it was ridiculous how he could still do that with a single sentence.

"A vanilla oat milk latte to go!" the barista called from behind the counter, interrupting the moment.

"That's mine," you said, gesturing vaguely toward the counter.

James nodded, but he didn't move, he kept looking at you, and from the way his fingers nervously tapped against the side of his coffee cup, you knew he was fighting an internal battle of his own.

"I know you're probably busy..." he said, taking a small step back to give you space, though he never looked away. "But, I moved here a week ago for a new project. Do you have to run, or... do you have five minutes?"

You glanced at your phone. 8:40, if you left right then, you'd arrive at your desk ten minutes early, answer emails, and continue with your life.

James slipped a hand into his coat pocket and waited for your answer.

"I have ten minutes," you heard yourself say before your brain had time to catch up.

A small laugh escaped him, a mix of relief and genuine happiness, and he nodded toward the table by the window he had just left. "Ten minutes is more than enough," he said, turning around to lead the way.

You walked toward the counter to pick up your vanilla latte. As you took the cardboard cup, you noticed your fingers trembling slightly, a physical reaction that betrayed the nerves you were trying to hide. The barista gave you a quick smile before turning to the next customer.

You sat down in the chair across from James. On the table, besides his half-finished coffee, there was a notebook and a pen.

“So, the big city,” James began, resting his forearms on the table and leaning slightly toward you, reducing the physical distance and, almost unintentionally, recreating a small bubble of intimacy. “You always said you wanted to come here after graduation. You look completely in your element.”

“It took me a while to adjust, I’m not going to lie,” you replied, wrapping both hands around the warm cup. “The pace here is intense, but I found my place. I work at an agency a few blocks from here. What about you? You said you moved here a week ago.”

James nodded, running a hand through his hair. That gesture, at least, hadn’t changed at all.

“Yeah, it was kind of last-minute. I was offered a position leading an urban design project here. Getting settled has been chaos, I still have everything packed in boxes in an apartment that’s way too big for me, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. Though I’ll admit, this place was a little overwhelming. Up until about two minutes ago.”

The way he looked at you gave the last sentence a weight that made you hold your breath. There was no flirtation in his tone; it was simply James being honest.

“And are you here alone?” you asked. The question lingered in the air.

James caught the implication immediately. A spark of amusement flashed in his eyes before his expression softened. “Alone,” he answered calmly, holding your gaze. “Completely alone. My dog arrives next week once the heavy part of the move is done, if that counts. But other than him, there’s no one.”

An involuntary, almost imperceptible sense of relief traveled down your spine. To distract yourself, you took a sip of your coffee.

“What about you?” he asked, tossing the question back with genuine curiosity. “Is there someone?”

You glanced at the café clock on the wall. Four of your ten minutes had already passed. But when you saw the anticipation on James’s face, you realized there was no point in hiding the truth.

“My routine is pretty solitary,” you said with a small smile. “I like the quiet before heading into the office.”

James nodded slowly, taking in your words. There was a brief silence between the two of you, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was the kind of pause that happens when two people who once cared deeply for each other try to figure out how much of the past remains intact and how much has worn away with time.

“It’s strange,” James murmured, breaking the silence as he absentmindedly stirred his spoon in his cup. “I ended up on this street completely by accident because I got lost. I came here because I desperately needed caffeine and then suddenly, there you are.”

“Fate has a pretty twisted sense of humor,” you commented, feeling the warmth of the coffee beginning to loosen the knot in your stomach.

“Or maybe it’s just good luck,” he replied. “We didn’t end things in the best way, I know, but I always wondered how you were doing. I always wanted to know if you managed to accomplish everything you talked about back then.”

Your ten minutes were running out, but the concept of time was beginning to lose its importance in the face of the moment’s gravity. You were about to answer when the phone in your bag started vibrating, cruelly reminding you of the real world.

You pulled it out quickly, feeling almost guilty, as though you’d been caught doing something forbidden. The screen displayed your boss’s name. It was 8:51.

“I have to take this,” you said with an apologetic grimace.

“Don’t worry, duty calls,” James replied, straightening in his chair and giving you an understanding smile.

You raised the phone to your ear as you stood. “Hello? Yes, Marta... No, I’m just around the corner. I’ll be there in two minutes. Yes, the reports are already on my desk... Of course. See you in the conference room.”

You hung up and slipped the phone away. When you looked up again, James was already standing, he had closed his notebook and was adjusting the buttons of his dark coat.

“You always were a woman of your word,” he commented, amusement dancing in his eyes as he walked with you toward the café exit.

The cool morning air hit your face the moment you pushed open the glass door. The sound of traffic, the murmur of hurried pedestrians, and the scent of damp asphalt instantly pulled you back to reality. Your office was only three blocks away.

You stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and turned to face him. James stopped in front of you, his hands tucked into his pockets, rocking slightly on his heels. The wind tousled the fringe falling over his forehead.

“It was really good seeing you, James. Truly,” you said, surprised by the complete honesty in your own voice.

“Same here. More than you can imagine,” he replied.

For a second, uncertainty hung between you, that awkward moment when neither person knows whether to say goodbye with a handshake, a hug, or a kiss on the cheek. James broke the indecision by stepping forward and wrapping his arms around you.

It was a brief hug, but a firm one. When he pulled away, James slipped one hand out of his pocket and held out a small card.

“My new number. And the address of my office, which, from what I can tell, isn’t too far from yours,” he said, looking at you. “If you ever have another ten minutes one afternoon, or maybe even an hour, I’d love for you to finish telling me what happened to you all these years.”

You took the card. Your fingers brushed his for a fraction of a second, and once again, you felt that spark.

“I’ll text you,” you promised, slipping the card into your blazer pocket.

“I’ll be waiting,” he smiled, taking a step back. “Have a good day at the office.”

“Good luck with the move.”

You turned around and started walking briskly toward your building. After a few yards, you couldn’t resist the temptation and glanced back over your shoulder. James was still there, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, watching you leave. You tightened your grip on your coffee cup and quickened your pace.

The next months became an exercise in patience and rediscovery. What started with a text message on a Thursday afternoon, "I have an hour free. Are you still interested in that coffee?" soon became a constant.

Too much had changed, and neither of you wanted to ruin the peace you'd found after the breakup by diving headfirst back into old habits. So, you decided to get to know each other again from scratch, as if you were two strangers who happened to share memories.

You discovered that the James Potter in his late twenties, no longer left everything until the last minute. Work had given him structure; you watched him speak with genuine passion about his urban development plans.

For his part, he got to know the woman you had become. He was always impressed by your confidence, by the way you defended your projects, and by how completely you had made the city your own.

"You're much more decisive than I remember," he told you one evening while the two of you shared a pizza on the floor of his new apartment, his enormous Labrador resting its head on your knees. "You used to overthink everything. Now you just go and do it, I like that."

"Well, the city forces you to grow up," you replied with a smile, though the compliment left a warmth in your chest that lingered for days.

As the summer went on, your meetings became more varied. They were no longer just coffee before work, they became walks through the park, visits to secondhand bookstores, and dinners after long days at the office.

The strangest thing was how easy everything felt, there wasn't the awkwardness of traditional first dates because you already knew he hated raw tomatoes, and he knew perfectly well that you crossed your fingers when you were nervous. Yet there was still this new layer of mystery: discovering his new musical tastes, his new ambitions, and the scars, both physical and emotional, that the years apart had left behind.

By September, the line between "just friends" had begun to feel dangerously thin.

You could see it in the way James held your gaze a second longer than was strictly platonic, or in how his hand unconsciously searched for yours whenever you crossed a busy street, only for him to let go a little too quickly afterward.

One autumn evening, as you walked back toward your building beneath a light drizzle that was beginning to cool the streets, the silence between you grew dense.

You stopped beneath the awning entrance, sheltered from the rain.

"Thanks for walking me home," you said, pulling the collar of your coat higher.

"Always," James replied.

His eyes flickered briefly to your lips before meeting yours again.

The wind picked up, and he took a step closer, closing the distance you had both spent months carefully maintaining.

"Hey..." he said. "I've been thinking."

"Oh yeah? About what?" you asked, your heart suddenly stumbling in your chest.

James ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "About how much I've loved getting to know you again these past few months. Really. You're incredible."

Then he took another half-step forward, leaving only inches between you and completely shattering the invisible barrier of friendship.

"I think I've already gotten to know my new best friend," he said softly. "And the problem is that I'm starting to like her just as much as I liked her the first time."

You froze.

The cool autumn air seemed to solidify inside your lungs, and your hands clenched into fists inside your coat pockets. You had no idea what to say.

James's words hung between you, mixing with the sound of rain striking the pavement.

For months, you built the perfect fortress, a safe place where James Potter was simply a wonderful friend recovered from your past. With a single sentence, he had torn it all down.

Your eyes widened slightly as you stared at him, your mind, which normally operated at a thousand miles an hour, went completely blank. You wanted to say something clever, maybe make a joke to ease the sudden electricity crackling in the air, but your vocal cords refused to cooperate. Your mouth parted slightly, but no sound emerged.

James noticed your paralysis immediately, the confidence he'd shown moments earlier wavered, his fingers twitched nervously, as though he wanted to touch your arm and apologize, but he stopped himself halfway.

"Hey..." he murmured, offering a small, shy smile. "You don't have to say anything. I didn't mean to scare you."

You remained motionless, your pulse hammering in your throat, painfully aware that whatever you said next would change everything, then the elevator bell rang inside the empty lobby. The metallic sound made you jump. The doors slid open, and you escaped into them as if they were a refuge. You pressed the button for your floor three times in rapid succession until the doors finally closed, erasing James and the rainy street from view.

The hum of the elevator surrounded you as it climbed, but the silence was deceptive. Inside your head, the noise was deafening.

"What did you just do?" you scolded yourself, leaning against the mirrored wall.

Your reflection stared back at you, completely lost cheeks flushed from cold and nerves, rain-speckled hair, wide eyes full of guilt. You had left him standing there.

After months of rebuilding something beautiful, you run away like a frightened teenager.

When the elevator finally stopped, you stepped out into the hallway of your floor and made your way to your apartment. Your hands were trembling so badly that you dropped your key once before finally managing to fit it into the lock, you slipped inside, turned the deadbolt, and rested your forehead against the cold wood of the door, closing your eyes.

Your apartment, which usually greeted you with a comforting sense of peace, felt strangely unfamiliar tonight. You let your bag fall to the floor without worrying where it landed and shrugged off your coat, draping it over the back of a chair.

You crossed the living room toward the window overlooking the main avenue. You knew it was a bad idea, knew it would only make everything worse, but your feet moved on their own, carefully, you approached the glass, partially hiding behind the curtain, and looked down toward the entrance of the building.

The sidewalk was empty. James was gone.

Only the reflection of the streetlights shimmered across the wet pavement while cars passed by, spraying water in their wake. A wave of something that felt alarmingly close to disappointment washed through you.

Then your phone began vibrating in the pocket of your coat. The steady buzz against your thigh made your heart lurch. Slowly, you pulled it out, already dreading what you might find on the screen. A text message.

From James.

You stared at the glowing notification for several long seconds, your pulse still racing as you debated whether to open it or simply turn your phone off completely.

Finally, you swiped your thumb across the screen.

“I'm sorry, I moved too fast and put pressure on you. That wasn't my intention, I never meant to scare you or damage what we have now.”

The simplicity of the message drove a sharp spike of guilt straight into your stomach.

There were no accusations, no anger, just James's usual kindness, even after being left standing alone in the rain in the most abrupt way possible.

You sank onto the couch, curling your legs against your chest. The phone remained lit in your hand, casting a bluish glow across your face in the dim living room.

You forced yourself to examine the panic that had overtaken you only minutes earlier. Why did you run? The answer was so simple it frightened you, because the safe ground, you'd convinced yourself you were standing on, had never really existed. For months, you had told yourself that you and James were only friends. That you had moved on, that the past was behind you, but the truth was that you'd fallen in love with him all over again, or maybe, if you were being completely honest with yourself, you'd never stopped.

You stared at the text box beneath his message. The cursor blinked patiently, waiting. You typed;

“I'm upstairs now. Everything's okay.”

Then deleted it, too cold.

You tried again.

“I'm sorry. I had a panic attack.”

Deleted, too vulnerable.

In the end, you placed the phone face down on the coffee table, you decided the best thing to do was let the night pass, to wait for the storm in your head to settle.

The four days that followed were filled with silence so complete it felt almost suffocating. Your phone never rang with James's familiar ringtone. No messages appeared on your screen in the middle of the afternoon. But the silence wasn't because of a lack of interest, if anything, it was because of the exact opposite, pure fear.

The problem wasn't that you didn't like James, the real problem was that you felt exactly the same way.

His words had lodged themselves firmly in your mind, replaying on an endless loop every night as you tossed and turned in bed.

The realization that the older James, the mature, grounded, renewed version of him, attracted you just as much, if not more, than the boy you'd loved years ago terrified you completely.

Moving forward meant tearing down the safety net of friendship that the two of you had spent months carefully rebuilding, and once that step was taken, there would be no going back. What if the ghosts of the past returned? The memory of your breakup, with its sleepless nights, distance, and broken promises, hung over you like a shadow.

You remembered how hard it had been to put yourself back together the first time. If you tried again and failed, you wouldn't just lose an ex-boyfriend. You would lose the chance to keep him in your life at all, whatever fragile thing remains between you would finally break for good. So, you retreated to your oldest ally: Routine.

On Friday morning, you walked into the café, ordered your vanilla oat milk latte, and sat at the table by the window, staring out at the street.

Part of you hoped to see his dark coat emerge from the crowd, another part dreaded it, but James never appeared. He was giving you space, or maybe he was afraid too.

On Saturday night, unable to focus on the movie playing on your television, you found yourself staring at the small white card he'd given you months earlier, still tucked safely inside the drawer of your nightstand. Your mind had become a battlefield between logic and your heart; logic told you to protect yourself, the stability you'd built in this city was too valuable to risk over a love from the past, but your heart remembered the warmth of his embrace, the easy familiarity of his laughter, and the unmistakable love in his eyes whenever he looked at you.

By Sunday, the weight of uncertainty had become unbearable, you couldn't spend the rest of your life hiding behind fear. If the past few months had taught you anything, it was that neither of you were the same immature college students anymore.

With shaking hands and a heart pounding against your ribs, you picked up your phone, opened your conversation with James, which had slipped several places down your message list after four days of silence, and typed:

"We need to talk. Do you have ten minutes?"

The moment you sent it, you locked the screen and placed the phone face down on the table, holding your breath as you waited for the answer that would determine whether you let the past win, or finally allowed yourself to build a future with him.

The reply came less than two minutes later. Not as a text, but as the sound of a notification that made your heart leap.

"For you, always. I'm at the park near your building, walking Sirius. Do you want me to come to the entrance, or would you rather come here?"

You looked out the window, the afternoon sky had begun to turn violet, and the autumn wind was blowing hard.

You didn't hesitate, you wrapped a scarf around your neck, grabbed your keys, and left, you needed to walk, and the cold air to clear your mind before seeing him again.

The moment you entered the park, you spotted him. James sat with his back to you on one of the wooden benches while his black Labrador enthusiastically sniffed through a pile of dry leaves, he wore the same dark coat from that first morning. Even from a distance, you could see the tension in the line of his shoulders. He wasn't moving. Just waiting.

Your footsteps across the grass made the dog perk up his ears and bark happily, immediately giving away your presence.

James turned around, the moment he saw you, he stood, relief flashed across his face, quickly followed by obvious caution.

"Hi," he said once you were close enough.

The wind tousled his hair, and his eyes searched for yours.

"Hi," you replied, stopping a few feet away.

Sirius trotted over enthusiastically, wagging his tail, and petting him gave you the few precious seconds you needed to gather your courage.

"I told you I'll always make time for you," James said softly, sliding his hands into his coat pockets. "Listen... I'm sorry if what I said the other night made you feel pressured. I never wanted to scare you or push you away. These last four days without hearing from you have been... difficult."

"I didn't pull away because I don't feel the same way, James." The words escaped before you could stop them. "The problem is exactly that I do. I feel exactly the same way you do."

James froze, a spark of hope flashed across his face, but before he could move toward you, you raised a hand.

You weren't finished.

"I feel the same way, and it terrifies me," you admitted, your voice trembling. "It took me a long time to recover from what happened between us in college. I built a life here where I feel safe. A life where I know exactly what tomorrow is going to look like, and then you came back and turned everything upside down."

You swallowed hard.

"These last few months have been wonderful, but I'm scared, James. I'm terrified that if we take the next step, the ghosts of the past will come back. What if we make the same mistakes? What if distance, work, or our own insecurities destroy everything we've worked so hard to rebuild? If we fail again… I don't think I could survive it."

James listened without interrupting once.

When you finally finished, he took the step you'd stopped him from taking before, closing the distance between you. You could feel the warmth radiating from him despite the cold. He removed his hands from his pockets and gently took yours in his. Your fingers were freezing.

"Look at me," he said softly.

You lifted your eyes.

"You have every right to be afraid. I am too. I'd be an idiot if I wasn't afraid of losing you again." He squeezed your hands gently, filling you with a sense of reassurance you hadn't realized you needed.

"But there's something you're forgetting," he continued, a tender smile touching his lips. "We're not those kids anymore, the ones who didn't know what they wanted or how to communicate, we've changed, you're not the same person, and neither am I."

His thumb brushed softly across your knuckles. "We can't pretend the past never happened, but we also can't let it decide our future. I don't want to go back to what we had before."

His voice softened further. "I want to build something completely new with you. Here. Now." He leaned closer, breaking the final physical barrier between you.

"I can't promise it'll be perfect. I can't promise we won't have problems. But I can promise that this time I know exactly what I have in front of me, and I'm not going to let it go because of something stupid."

His eyes never left yours. "We don't have to rush. We can take it slow."

A small smile appeared. "One day at a time. What do you say?"

The wind swept through the park again, sending dry leaves spiraling around your feet, but the cold no longer mattered, you looked down at your hands intertwined with his, then at his face, the face of the man you'd loved, the man you'd missed, the man you'd rediscovered in an ordinary little café. The ghosts were still there somewhere, tucked away in forgotten corners of memory, but for the first time, the light of the present felt brighter than the shadows of the past.

"One day at a time," you whispered. A tremendous weight lifted from your shoulders.

James smiled, and before you could say anything else, he leaned down and sealed the promise with the kiss you'd both been waiting months for.

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٠࣪⭑just an earth angel dreaming of her wings٠࣪⭑