24 Aug. '78: They Will Hear Me Roar: Lily

[James Potter]

▶︎ You saw my pain washed out in the rain
Broken glass, saw the blood run from my veins
But you saw no fault, no cracks in my heart
And you knelt beside my hope torn apart

But the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view...

[following: every breath you take]

"Lily? Back already, love?" The door slammed, and James carefully replaced the journals he'd wiled the time away thumbing through, grateful for their almost-endless abundance, and rose from his seat on the floor - he couldn't yet bring himself to use the chair at the desk, his father belonged there - brushing dust off his pants and wetness from his eyes as he made his way out of his father's study. Or, rather - his study, his and Lily's. The home that had always been too big for him and his parents, and then him and his parents and Sirius, was altogether too much for just him and his wife. The familiar spaces felt cavernous and full of echoes, and he wished they were full of ghosts, if that meant he could speak with his parents again. It wasn't the spaces that were too much, James knew, but that their lives had fully been upended in just a few short weeks. He felt like he'd been flying and trapped in the unrelenting grip of a tornado, and he tried to get to its eye or hold on, just hold on and have the strength to outlast it, only to be pulled back into the swirling mess at every opportunity it had...

They'd only just buried his mother, and he was planning a funeral for his father. That's what he should have done today while Lily was out, follow up on arrangements - that's what he should have been doing, had he wasted the day?

This was supposed - this was supposed to be the happiest time of their lives, his and Lily's, they'd only just wed. And instead of celebrating as a family, they were now the only Potters left, and maybe he'd been leaning on her too much, maybe that's why she'd wanted to take care of the shopping on her own today. Or maybe she knew him, and knew that he needed time with himself these days, even if - because, rather - he was avoiding it as much as he could. One day he could read his father's journals or a letter from his mother and not feel his heart seize up, not force down the rage and panic that simmered just under his skin, not feel the air forced from his lungs. But that day wasn't this one, and he needed to hear them if only through their written words, even if doing so was upsetting, to say the least, and if he - if he let himself feel the truth of what had happened, fully, he didn't - he didn't know what would happen, he didn't know how he could stand again -

They were real. They were real, their clothes and their art and their writings were real, and they were his, and this house was so full of them, there wasn't a corner that didn't hide a memory or look wrong in a way he felt foolish talking about - because his mother liked to read and look out to the garden from that window seat, so a cup of tea that she'd left behind, again, should be waiting for her on the sill, with the matching pale blue saucer she liked, but the sill was empty, and it shouldn't be, and it was a fall from his broom at every notice. He was holding himself together, he was trying, Lily and his mates were too - and it was exhausting. He'd never been worn so thin, pushed so much down, and as James stepped into the entry to find his wife all but glowing with a burning rage, his brow furrowed in concern as he approached her. As he took her in, the line of his jaw hardened, the furious energy boiling beneath his skin ready to be directed at whatever, whoever, had gotten her worked up. "Lily, what's happened?"