You Found Me At The Edge
A James Potter x Jo Reed (OC) story
For the rest of the story use the link below
https://archiveofourown.org/works/82086306/chapters/216010166
She loved him quietly. He realized too late. And by the time James Potter understood how much Jo Reed meant to him, she was already falling apart. A heartbreaking Marauders-era story about grief, almost-loss, and the people who stay when everything else starts breaking.
TW: depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, grief, emotional distress, and loss of a parent.
Please read with care. If you need support, call or text 988 (U.S. and territories), text HOME or HOLA to 741741, or use FindaHelpline to find support in your country. If you’re in immediate danger, call emergency services now.
Soundtrack:
Snuff — Slipknot
Chasing Pavements — Adele
Lose You to Love Me — Selena Gomez
Chalk Outlines — Ren & CHINCHILLA
Unsteady — X Ambassadors
Always Remember Us This Way — Lady Gaga
Do I Wanna Know? — Arctic Monkeys
Revenge — XXXTentacion
One More Light — Linkin Park
Talking to the Moon — Bruno Mars
Yellow — Coldplay
Wonderwall — Oasis
You Found Me — The Fray
Ordinary — Alex Warren
Adore You - Harry Styles
She Looks So Prefect - 5 Seconds of Summer
Into You - Ariana Grande
Riptide- Vance Joy
Just The Way You Are - Bruno Mars
Hooked On A Feeling - Blue Swede, Bjorn Skifs
Back To Black - Amy Winehouse
You Should See Me In A Crown - Billie Eilish
I'm Not Okay - My Chemical Romance
Bad Company - Five Finger Death Punch
Given Up - Linkin Park
Living Dead Girl - Rob Zombie
Love On The Brain - Rihanna
Evertime We Touch - Cascada
Ella Y Yo - Don Omar
Chasing Cars - Snow Patrol
Lost On You - LP
Can You Feel My Heart - Bring Me The Horizon
Kiwi - Harry Styles
All The Things She Said -
Beggin' - Maneskin
Confident - Demi Lovato
I'm Yours - Isabel LaRosa
Chapter One: The Space You Left
James Potter POV
There were some silences that screamed.
James had learned that too late.
The common room was loud tonight. Too loud. Laughter bounced off the stone walls, warm firelight flickered over old tapestries, and somewhere near the chess table Sirius was cackling like a maniac because he’d cheated and Remus had actually noticed for once. Peter was trying to defend whatever ridiculous move he’d made. Lily was speaking to Marlene by the stairs, one hand moving when she talked, red hair catching gold in the flames.
It should have felt like home.
It should have felt like one of those nights he’d remember years from now with a grin on his face, some perfect little snapshot from youth before the world got uglier.
Instead, James sat in the armchair by the window and felt like something had been quietly cut out of him.
He didn’t know when he started looking for Jo Reed in every room.
Maybe it had always been that way.
Maybe since first year, when she’d marched straight up to him on the train with ink on her fingers and that unimpressed look on her face, like she’d already decided he was too loud and probably insufferable. He’d laughed because she’d been right. She’d laughed because he hadn’t denied it. And that had been that. James and Jo. Jo and James. For years it had felt as natural as breathing.
She had been there for everything.
Every detention. Every Quidditch victory. Every stupid prank. Every late-night study session where she pretended not to enjoy helping him. Every argument. Every apology. Every scraped knee, bruised ego, failed test, reckless idea, and half-formed dream.
And then Lily had said yes.
James had thought the world had cracked open in the best possible way that day. He’d been so stupidly happy he could hardly stand it. Lily Evans, brilliant and fierce and impossible Lily, finally letting him in.
Everyone had celebrated.
Everyone except Jo.
Not that she’d done anything wrong. That was almost the worst part. She’d smiled. She’d hugged him. She’d told him she was happy for him in a voice so steady he hadn’t thought twice about it.
Then, little by little, she was just... gone.
Not completely. Jo Reed was never dramatic enough for that. She didn’t make scenes. Didn’t slam doors. Didn’t accuse. Didn’t ask for anything.
She just stepped back with such quiet grace that no one noticed at first.
Except James.
He noticed when the seat next to him in Charms was empty because she’d started sitting with Alice instead. He noticed when she stopped waiting for him after Quidditch practice. He noticed when she laughed with him instead of at him, like there was suddenly a careful distance in it. He noticed that she no longer touched his arm when she talked, no longer leaned her shoulder into his in the library, no longer stole bites off his plate at dinner.
He noticed because some selfish part of him hated it.
And he hated himself more for hating it, because what right did he have?
He had Lily.
Lily, who was everything good. Lily, who looked at him now and then from across the room with soft green eyes and a smile that still made his chest go stupidly light. Lily, who deserved a boy who wasn’t sitting in the middle of happiness feeling haunted by a girl who had simply stopped standing so close.
“Oi.”
Sirius dropped into the chair beside him, all careless limbs and sharp instinct. “You look tragic. Properly tragic. It’s revolting.”
James forced a grin that didn’t hold. “Thanks.”
Sirius followed his gaze across the common room, though James wasn’t even sure where he’d been looking anymore. “You and Evans have a row?”
“No.”
“Quidditch?”
“No.”
“McGonagall finally realized you’re the reason her eye twitches?”
James snorted, but it came out thin.
Sirius’s expression shifted, humor dropping away. “What is it?”
James almost said nothing.
Instead he heard himself ask, “Have you noticed Jo’s been avoiding me?”
Sirius leaned back.
There was a beat too long before he answered, and James felt something in his gut tighten.
“Bit,” Sirius said casually. Too casually. “Figured you had too.”
“Did I do something?”
Sirius’s mouth opened, then closed. “Prongs.”
That was never a good sign. Sirius only used that voice when he knew something James didn’t.
“What?”
But Sirius just shook his head once. “You should talk to her.”
James looked for her on instinct then, as if she might have appeared just because they were speaking about her.
She wasn’t in the common room.
Again.
It was almost funny, if he was in the mood for laughter. Jo had become some kind of ghost in his life, always recently here, always just missed, always disappearing around corners. He still saw her every day. In class. At meals. In hallways. Out on the grounds with her coat pulled tight around herself when it got cold.
But never the same way as before.
Not where it counted.
Not where it hurt.
He found her two nights later in the library.
Of course it would be the library. Jo liked the far back corner near the tall arched window, where moonlight spilled over the table and the shelves blocked the rest of the room out. It felt like a world cut small enough to survive in. James had spent half his school life there with her, pretending to revise while she actually did.
Tonight she was alone.
A stack of books sat around her untouched. Her quill rested between her fingers, but she wasn’t writing. Just staring out the window into the black.
James slowed as he approached.
For one strange second, she looked breakable.
It startled him. Jo had never been breakable. She was stubborn and wry and sharper than most people gave her credit for. Even when she was hurting, she carried herself like she refused to let the world enjoy it.
But tonight there was something in the line of her shoulders that made his chest ache.
“Jo.”
Her head turned.
The moment she saw him, she smiled.
That was almost worse than if she hadn’t.
“James,” she said softly. “You scared me.”
“You say that like I’m not incredibly charming.”
She huffed the faintest laugh. “You’re many things, Potter.”
He sat down across from her without being invited, because for years he never had to ask.
Jo glanced at the books, then back at him. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.”
The words were simple.
They landed like stones.
Her fingers tightened around the quill. “Why?”
That irritated him more than it should have. “Why d’you think? Because I haven’t properly spoken to you in weeks.”
“We speak.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Her eyes dropped.
James leaned forward, lowering his voice because Madam Pince was a menace lurking somewhere in the shadows. “Did I do something?”
“No.”
“Jo.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Then why are you acting like this?”
That made her look up.
And there it was. That flicker. Pain, gone almost as soon as it appeared. Jo was always good at swallowing hurt before anyone could look directly at it.
“I’m not acting like anything.”
“Yes, you are.” His frustration came out sharper now, brittle around the edges. “You’ve been disappearing on me since Lily and I started going out.”
Jo went very still.
James realized what he’d said only after it was already sitting between them.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then she gave a tiny nod, like some private confirmation had been handed to her from the universe. “Right.”
James frowned. “Right what?”
“Nothing.”
“Jo, stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“That.” He exhaled hard, dragging a hand through his hair. “Making me feel like I’m having half a conversation.”
Something in her face changed then. Not anger. Nothing that easy.
Just exhaustion.
A person could look more shattered by exhaustion than rage ever managed.
“You’re with Lily,” Jo said quietly.
It was such an obvious statement that James blinked. “Yes.”
“And Lily’s lovely.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re happy.”
He hesitated only because the question felt strange, not because the answer wasn’t true. “Yes.”
Jo nodded again, eyes on the tabletop now. “Then there’s your answer.”
James stared at her. “That makes no sense.”
A bitter little smile touched her mouth. “It does to me.”
It should have ended there. Maybe if James had been wiser, or kinder, or less selfish, he would have let it. He would have walked away and pretended not to feel that cold knot in his ribs.
But he had known Jo too long.
And some truths, once they begin circling the room, make the air too thin to keep breathing.
“So tell me,” he said.
She looked up slowly. “James.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Her eyes were shining now, and he hated that he noticed. Hated it more that he couldn’t stop.
“Please,” he said, and he meant it in a way that scraped his throat raw.
Jo laughed then.
Not because anything was funny.
It was the sound people made when they were standing at the edge of something terrible and didn’t know whether to jump or run.
“You really don’t know?” she asked.
James felt his pulse start to pound.
“No.”
Another silence.
Then she put the quill down with careful fingers, as if she couldn’t trust her hands anymore.
“I loved you,” Jo said.
No.
Not loved.
Loved.
Past tense trying to do the work of present tense.
James didn’t move.
The library seemed to tilt, the moonlight too bright against the table, the dark shelves suddenly pressing in.
Jo swallowed. “I think... maybe I loved you from the moment you smiled at me on the train and didn’t care that I’d insulted you first. Which is embarrassing, really. Terrible taste on my part.”
Her voice almost sounded steady. That was the worst thing about it. She was saying words that should have broken in half, and she was saying them as if she’d practiced surviving them alone.
James opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Jo saved him from trying.
“I never meant to tell you,” she whispered. “That wasn’t the plan. You were my best friend. You were always supposed to be my best friend, and that was enough. It had to be enough.”
The fire in the library hearth crackled once. Somewhere far away a page turned.
James could hear his heartbeat in his ears.
“When you liked other girls, I dealt with it. When you were stupid, I dealt with it. When you were arrogant, impossible, reckless, and irritating beyond belief, I dealt with that too. I thought maybe one day it would go away.” She smiled, but her eyes were wet now. “Turns out love is a bit ruder than that.”
“Jo...” he said, barely.
“But then Lily said yes.” Her breath shook. “And you looked so happy. I’d never seen you look so happy. And I realized two things all at once. First, that I would never be the one you looked at like that. And second, that if I stayed exactly where I was, loving you quietly and pretending it didn’t hurt, I was going to start resenting you for being happy.”
James felt physically sick.
She rubbed at her eyes, angry at herself for needing to. “And you didn’t deserve that. Lily didn’t deserve that. So I did the only thing I could think of. I stepped back.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, because it was the only truth he could grab.
Jo laughed softly again, tears slipping free now. “I know.”
That was the knife.
Not accusation. Not blame. Just mercy.
Mercy was crueler.
James leaned back in his chair because suddenly he couldn’t breathe properly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What would’ve been the point?” she asked, and there it was at last, all the hurt stripped bare. “What was I meant to say? ‘Congratulations on getting the girl you love, by the way it’s tearing me open a bit?’”
He flinched.
Jo shut her eyes for a second. When she opened them, they were wrecked and honest and far older than seventeen.
“I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”
“You could never ruin anything.”
Her mouth trembled. “James, that’s lovely, but it’s not true.”
He hated this. Hated the helplessness of it. Hated that every kind thing he wanted to say sounded insulting now, because none of it changed the shape of the world.
He loved Lily.
And Jo loved him.
And there was no magic in Hogwarts that could make all of them walk away unhurt.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The words were small. Pathetic. Useless.
Jo nodded like she’d expected nothing else. “I know.”
James looked at her and realized, with a horrible sinking clarity, that she had been grieving him while he was still right there.
Talking to her between classes. Laughing at lunch. Waving from across the Quidditch pitch. Existing in a hundred harmless ways that were probably killing her.
He felt monstrous.
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know that too.”
He hated how kind she kept being.
It made the whole thing uglier.
Jo took a shaky breath and stood before he could say anything else. “I should go.”
James stood too fast, chair scraping. “Don’t.”
She froze.
He didn’t know what he meant by it. Don’t leave. Don’t stop being mine in whatever way I still get to have you. Don’t take this awful new truth and walk away with it. Don’t make me live in a world where I know how much pain you’ve hidden from me and I can’t fix any of it.
But fix it how?
He had no right to ask her to stay exactly where she was hurting.
No right to reach for comfort from the person he’d broken without meaning to.
Jo looked at him, and for one second James thought she might come apart.
Instead she squared her shoulders.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “Not the way it was.”
He felt those words physically, a blow to the sternum.
“Jo...”
She smiled through tears, and it was the saddest thing James Potter had ever seen.
“You were my favorite person,” she whispered. “That’s what makes it so bad.”
Then she turned and walked away.
James stood there long after she disappeared between the shelves.
He did not follow.
That, somehow, was the part he hated most.
He couldn’t sleep.
The boys had long since fallen quiet, Sirius breathing low from the bed across the room, Remus turned toward the wall with a book half-open on his chest, Peter snoring softly. Moonlight cut silver across the floorboards.
James lay on his back and stared at the canopy above him.
You were my favorite person.
It went round and round in his head like a curse.
He thought of first year. Of Jo stealing his chocolate frog and claiming she was doing him a favor. Of third year, when he’d fallen from his broom in a storm and she’d screamed louder than anyone when he hit the ground. Of fourth year, her hand finding his under the table while they waited for exam results, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Of fifth year, when everyone had hated him for something stupid he’d said and she’d called him an arrogant berk to his face before sitting with him anyway so he wouldn’t eat alone. Of every laugh. Every fight. Every quiet hour.
He thought of Lily, too. Honest and blazing Lily. The girl he had chased and finally, finally reached. The girl he loved.
And the truth was hideous in its simplicity.
Loving one person did not stop you from hurting another.
Being happy did not make you innocent.
He had not asked for Jo’s heart. He had not knowingly taken it. But he had still, somehow, ended up holding the broken thing in his hands.
James turned onto his side and pressed the heel of his palm against his eyes.
There was no version of this where he got to keep everything.
He understood that now.
Friendship was not some little enchanted object that could be dropped and picked up again later, shining exactly the same. Sometimes it was flesh and blood. Sometimes it could bleed out.
Sometimes you only realized what something was worth when it stepped back and took half the room’s light with it.
He hadn’t lost Jo completely.
Not yet.
But lying there in the dark, James understood with awful certainty that the old version of them was dead.
And he didn’t know how to bury it.
Weeks passed.
That was the cruelest trick time played. The world kept moving even when something inside you had stopped.
Jo was still there.
Always there.
And never his, not even in the simple way she used to be.
She was polite now, almost painfully so. She still spoke to him. Still helped in class if a professor paired them together. Still smiled when Sirius made some ridiculous comment. Still nodded at Lily kindly, because Jo Reed would rather die than be cruel to a girl who’d done nothing wrong.
But the ease was gone.
The softness was gone.
James had not realized how much of his life had been built around reaching toward Jo without thinking. Now every instinct hit an invisible wall.
He wanted to tell her stupid things. Wanted to show her the new move he’d pulled off on his broom. Wanted to sit beside her in the common room and complain about Slughorn. Wanted to ask if she was cold when he saw her outside by the lake in that thin coat she always insisted was warm enough.
And every time he stopped himself.
Because now he knew.
Now every ordinary kindness might feel like cruelty dressed up as care.
So he watched her from distances he hated.
And some nights, when Lily fell asleep against his shoulder by the fire and the common room grew dim, James would look up and find Jo by the window or the stairs or the portrait hole, looking anywhere but at him.
And the look on her face when she thought no one could see her was enough to hollow him out.
He had loved before in the easy, radiant way people sang about.
He had never understood until then that love also had a graveyard.
That sometimes it stood quietly across the room in school robes, pretending to be fine.
That sometimes it smiled at you so you wouldn’t have to feel the full weight of what it had cost.
And that sometimes the saddest thing in the world was not being unloved.
It was being loved deeply, faithfully, for years...
and only finding out when it was already too late.
Chapter Two Even If It Breaks Me
