Unsaid
Some things just went unsaid.
Some things were just always understood, they didn't need to be voiced, we didn't want them to be voiced because somehow, if they were, all that there was would simply shatter to pieces.
It was understood that James and I were best friends, brothers-at-arms, that we would die for each other a million times over and it was understood that our loyalty to each other transcended all other loyalties.
We didn't have to tell each other that we loved each other, we knew it already, why bother trying to explain it? It didn't matter when I chased after girl after girl, knowing none of them would ever be enough and it didn't matter when James started vying for Lily's attention. We did what was expected of us and we played our roles well, no-one ever suspected that there was anything beneath the Gryffindor bravado, the pranks, the arrogance.
Nothing was said that first fumbling night in our fourth year when lips brushed against each other in the dark and our breath mingled, those first few moments of discovery, pure hesitant bliss.
Nothing was said that night I turned up on his doorstep, soaked through and strangely numb after having finally left my family for good, he just accepted me in, explained to his parents I would be staying there from now on and in the night he held me as I cried.
When school finished it didn't matter that James bought a flat with Lily instead of me because it was understood that they belonged with each other, that that was how things were supposed to be yet still we knew, I knew, that a part of James would nevertheless always belong to me not her.
At their wedding I was the best man, a role I performed admirably, all the right jokes in all the right places, it hurt more than I expected it to and I think James understood that better through the small silences than he might have done if I had tried to explain through words. Thats was why we had made sure the night before was ours, after the 'bachelor party' with Remus and Peter, in the silence and the heat and the muffled groans of passion, our goodbyes hung heavy in the air. It didn't need to be said.
Then the war started and fear spread, death and misery seemed to hang in the air that we breathed turning bitter in the back of our throats and we finally understood that we weren't kids anymore. Those memories are the most bittersweet, when only the cold and the dark and the blood seemed to remain, the comfort we sought in each other tainted somehow but we needed it more and more. Only then could James be with Lily and be happy, only once the poison had faded slightly, diluted between us, changed into a wrong that we could understand and make sense of. But poison had always been a part of my life and with no-one to turn to if James wasn't there sometimes I found myself drowning in it, especially when I found out Regulus had become one of them. Somehow James would always know, always find me, always bring me back from the edge.
We needed each other. It was never whole, what we had, but it was more real than anything I had ever or will ever feel. It was love and it went unsaid.
Only now, I wish it had been said, I wish I had told him everything I ever felt for him, thanked him for everything he ever gave me, held him and never let go because now, in the bitter misery of Azkaban all I can see is the ruins of the house and his pale broken body.
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