James stood leaning against the old brick wall as wind howled through the night.
There was a promise that had been made ages ago or so it seemed, but it could have been easily overlooked at that very moment, his fingers nervously twirling an old familiar friend in his pocket. Thin, light and frail. The Quidditch player's callused fingers twitched and tightened around the tempting foe more times than he could count, grasping for something he wasn't sure was even there. His eyes were glued to the whiteness around him—snow. James would have chuckled had he not felt so miserable at the moment.
So trapped.
Snow in all its glory, surrounding him at what he imagined to be one of his darker moments. Snowflakes, unique and innocent, dancing around him as if nothing in the world was wrong. A sudden urge came over him, to vanish all the beauty around him, because it made him more anguished and helpless. James didn't feel like snow; he felt like hail, and storm, and thunder, and hurricanes. He felt like icy biting winter, not snow, which was ever so gentle and quiet. James felt a lot like cold; cold and pain, on the verge of an avalanche but unable to start it. The longer he thought of it, the more he could feel the frost sneaking through the cracks of his coat, travelling past the buttoned shirt and caressing his skin. Almost caressing; an unwanted touch that he had no resolve to fight at all. There was no will in him to hide any deeper in the comfort of his coat or retreat to the warmth of his home.
If it was a home. Perhaps it was a prison now, a place to hide away from the ticking bomb that would inevitably explode. He shook his head, a few stray snowflakes falling before they could melt. It wasn't a prison, it was a home. A place to live, perhaps a place to die—how could he know?—but it was a home. They had tried to make it one at least. Even if it lacked the necessary freedom it was a home, warm and loving and as safe as it could be.
He sighed, dropping the cigarette in the pocket for a few seconds before making up his mind. James' fingers felt numb from cold as he mechanically brought the lit white stick to his lips and inhaled.
Sometimes freedom was killing a bit of yourself before someone else finished you off.
A/N: Hope you like it. It's just something little to keep writing.