A/N:
Just a few things about this fanfic, disclaimers and tidbits:
-The title is taken from Sara Teasdale's suicide note, or poem depending on how you look at it.
-I base any Marauder fanfiction I write heavily on the influence of dorkorific and ladyjaidas' fanfic "The Shoebox Project". Basically, I write the Marauders with the idea that I'm just continuing their personalities and stories from Shoebox. So, if you like this story please go give that one a read because it really is always my inspiration. ( /)
-As always, I don't own any of these characters or the HP world or anything.
Hope you enjoy!
Part One
James and Lily Potter
O you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?
I have been changed to a hound with one red ear;
I have been in the Path of Stones and the Wood of Thorns,
For somebody hid hatred and hope and desire and fear
Under my feet that they follow you night and day.
A man with a hazel wand came without sound;
He changed me suddenly; I was looking another way;
And now my calling is but the calling of a hound;
And Time and Birth and Change are hurrying by.
I would that the Boar without bristles had come from the West
And had rooted the sun and moon and stars out of the sky
And lay in the darkness, grunting, and turning to his rest.
-William Butler Yeats "HE MOURNS FOR THE CHANGE THAT HAS COME UPON HIM AND HIS BELOVED, AND LONGS FOR THE END OF THE WORLD"
"Don't go too far, Amelia."
"I won't!" The little girls turns to wave at her grandmother before skipping deeper into the cemetery.
The sun is shining brightly over Godric's Hallow as the old grandmother moves slowly through the small cemetery, brushing off her husband and elder brother's tombstone and laying flowers. She stands, joints popping, and scans the small graveyard for her granddaughter. The small girl has skipped off; off to wander through a place she is too innocent to understand the sadness of.
The grandmother smiles softly before laying out a blanket beneath a tall maple tree and sighing happily as she leans against the trunk and lets her eyelids flicker closed.
The small girl, Amelia, wanders aimlessly through the headstones. She pauses every so often to trace the engraved letters and practice reading the names. Her reading is improving, slowly, but she still gets stuck on some of the harder words, the longer names.
"Gi…de…on." The girl sounds out each letter as she traces the cool stone. "Pe…Per…Pervic…Percival."
She does not know that each word she reads is the name of someone who has died, that her bare feet rest in the cool grass that grows richly above coffins and below that, bones.
She reaches a large headstone and begins to trace the name.
"J…Ja…" She huffs, frustrated. J's are hard for her. "Ja…Jame…James. Po…Pott…Potter."
James Potter. A name, a successfully read word to her and nothing else. Hash marks in stone, a marking as primitive to this child as the scratch a stick may make in mud.
She does not see flashing hazel eyes and perpetual glasses and thick, untidy black hair always on end. She does not see and will never see a boy, a teenager, a man, a father who laughed and joked and grinned with mischief. She cannot know the certain angle of a hand ran through hair, of that same hand closing around a golden snitch again and again and again. She will never comprehend the goodness, the bravery, the warmth, the love, the hate, the easy arms around the shoulders of true friends.
To her, James Potter is a series of rough-hewn hewn letters that march across a tombstone. She moves on without thought, without a second glance.
"Li…Lily. Po…Oh, Potter. Lily Potter." Amelia smiles at her cleverness. her ability to find the meaning in the assortment of letters on the stone.
Lily Potter. It makes her think of a flowerpot and, for a moment, Amelia laughs at the image.
She will never see vibrantly red hair curling around a slim neck and flashing, emerald green eyes and scattered freckles. She does not see a girl, a teenager, a woman, a mother who was quick to anger and quicker to love and whose smile was both wicked and lovely. She will never know of boy with black eyes who loved so dearly, a small boy with emerald green eyes who would never know. She cannot comprehend a wand dangling easily between loose fingers and a fond reprimand poised on smiling lips.
Amelia sees the names as linked only in the word "Potter", making it easier for her to read a second time. Nothing more.
She does not see Lily and James. She cannot see a love deeper and stronger than imaginable. She cannot see the desperation in hazel eyes as he was time and time again thwarted. Cannot see the softening in green eyes as she begins to slowly warm up. Cannot see hands clasped, lips pressed together, bodies made to fit perfectly. Does not see a wedding, a child, or the violent flash-of-green-light ending.
"Amelia! Let's go, child, I'm ready for lunch." The grandmother waves at the child, gesturing at the cemetery gate.
"Coming!" Amelia skips back to her grandmother, never sparing a glance backward.
She is a child, innocent and naïve. She does not know.
And where there was once laughter and warmth, there is now only cool stone, and so there is no one to tell her.
A peace descends on the cemetery as the child and her grandmother leave. An autumn wind moves through the grasses, scattering ruby red leaves against the headstones.