things you said at 1 am lily/james
@dcarest -
“I’m not crying." It’s their first year - the first time James has been away from home, away from his parents. Although they're kept busy in the daytime (he can put on a brave face, laugh and joke around with his friends in the light), the dark brings about new frustrations and worries, leaving James tired and his eyes red rimmed in the mornings. Tonight is the first night anybody’s actually caught him curled up in his favourite chair in the common room, the sleeve of his pajama shirt wet with tears. He resents that - resents her, just for a moment, for catching him like this.
“He’ll be fine." Third year, and their secret (Remus’ secret) is well and truly blown where Lily Evans is concerned. It’s a relief, in some ways, both to know that she cares about Remus as much as the three of them do, and she’s not likely to spill the secret to everybody else. He doesn’t understand why she’s close to crying, though - it wasn’t as if they watched Remus get attacked (although he threw up the first time he saw Remus change under the light of the moon, the sounds of grinding bones and pure pain making his stomach twist in sympathy for his friend, who was surely far too young to have to endure such a curse ).
“I’m sorry.” Too late for that. It’s fifth year and any thoughts about his performance on their most recent exams have completely disappeared, his only focus to get Lily to talk to him again after that afternoon by the lake. Even the memory of it seems to have soured in his mind, the realization that there was something in him that would do anything - say anything - that would begin to make amends. It didn’t even bring him pleasure that Severus was still in her bad books, he was just... a sort of animated shell of himself recently, waiting for a chance to try and right what he’d wronged.
“I can’t sit here and do nothing.” Christmas is definitely the wrong time to be talking about the war, but it feels so absurd to be visiting her family while muggles and muggleborns are being targeted by the most supreme evil any of them could have imagined. James had always been restless, always needed to be moving, doing things, but this was a whole new type of desperation to be out there. They could help, he was sure of it! The young always think they’re invincible. That’s what his father had told him, but James felt invincible. To stay on at Hogwarts, to study for and sit exams in subjects he might never have to use... it seemed wrong to pretend that there was a safe bubble while others risked their lives.
“They got another Muggle family.” That death hits the hardest, James thinks as he sits on their edge of their bed, his head in his hands as he struggles not to explode or dissolve into tears then and there, with the owl who’d carried the letter still pecking at his fingers, hoping for a treat (or three). It’s too much to bear at the present moment in time, and he feels so old at nineteen, as if he’d seen all the world had to offer in such a short time - and it’s so dark, the world James had been introduced to after leaving school. Filled with evil people, he’s been so disillusioned in it all, although his group of friends - brothers, really - remains strong and intact, all of them doing what they can. But hidden away with a baby on the way... he feels helpless as they watch more and more bodies pile up in the news.
“Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! I'll hold him off!” Wand- Where was his bloody wand? Utter panic scrambles his brain as he searches his pockets desperately, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose as he throws himself between his wife, his son and the evil that’s about to come through their door.
He’s left it downstairs.
It hits him then -
They’re finished.
They’ve been betrayed.
There’ll be no more moments; no more laughter, no more tears, no more time.
Merlin, he wishes he had more time.
The front door explodes inwards as he watches, and James - wandless, defenseless James, all arrogance and recklessness, lunges forward to do what he can to protect the two people he loves the most in the world.
