Wrong Turn Somewhere |L&S
closed starter for @snufffles !
James has finally fallen asleep, even though dawn looms on the horizon. Everything is that eerie colorless gray, like the whole world is stuck in between night and day. She knows she won’t sleep, can’t sleep, as long as her baby lays there across from her, her baby boy, grown now. Scarred.
They’re in guest accommodations at Hogwarts for now, all piled up together in blankets and sleeping bags in the common room, unwilling to leave each other’s sight even for a moment, lest this all be some terribly cruel dream. They’re staying here until they determine what to do, how to reintroduce James and her, if that’s even what they want to do, now that You-Know-Who is back, and Lily wants to sob, because he hadn’t even been gone when she— what, died?
She remembers dying, come to think of it, remembers how she begged, and pleaded, and heard James hit the floor. She remembers how Harry was so quiet, watching Voldemort with his wide green eyes, his mother’s eyes, and how they were the last thing she saw, green, bright green, and then—
Fog, and haze, and an achingly bittersweet echo of pride and love, so much love.
And then Harry was dueling with Voldemort, in a graveyard, and participating in the Triwizard Tournament, of all things? And they stayed up, for hours, just talking, but not about anything like that. James told Harry all about the Marauders, and the mischief he and those dolts got up to in school, and she told him about growing up with Petunia and Severus—’You grew up with who??’— and what it was like being his parent when he was a baby. He used to love sweet potatoes, did he know that? He would fall asleep riding his broom and she had to put a sticking charm on his bottom to make sure he didn’t tumble off before they could corral him.
He’s asleep now, and James has finally succumbed to it, and now it’s just her and Sirius, and she wipes her eyes for what must be the millionth time that night. “You look like shite, Pads,” she says with a watery huff of laughter, but it doesn’t stick. “What happened to him? What happened to you? How did everything go so wrong?”