Sometimes You Do Get a Tomorrow.
By Deemarie
Disclaimer: I own nothing of this story, except A.J. and Lisette Valjean.
Author's Note: My very first story so if you don't burn me alive in flames that'd be appreciated. Constructive criticism is cool though. I'm not entirely sure of the timeline either.
They all think I'm crazy. They all think I'm a coward and maybe they're right. After all, that night seventeen years ago I did run. However, it's not what you think. I wasn't scared to face Voldemort. It was a job that needed doing and I could do it. I knew that.
I was lost. My life from age eleven centered on one thing. Destroy Voldemort. I was nineteen years old and had let my world shape me to its image. I was Harry Potter, THE BOY WHO LIVED, not Harry Potter that kid who dated Padma Patil for a while and strangely enough had really had started enjoying potions over the years. Sure people knew these things but didn't think about them. I didn't know what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I knew what they thought I should do. Become an auror, a quidditch player, the new DADA professor or even just live off my parents' money.
Therefore, I left. I took the bike Sirius had left me when he died and left. A road trip like in the muggle movies. Or to be more exact, a road life.
I worked at odd jobs here and there, mostly in Europe. Figured it'd be too easy to run into someone I knew in the U.K. I decided finally that I could be a bartender happily. Just like potions class, you mix a little of this and that and end up with something totally new.
So I was content. I was fluent in French and German and I could get by in Norwegian, Italian, and Spanish. I could find work in almost any bar anywhere.
Then my life turned upside down. Lisette Valjean walked into a little bar outside of Paris when I was twenty-three and she was twenty. A little petite girl with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. I bought her a drink and that was that. We got married by a judge three days later.
We settled down, I got a bartending job in Marseilles and she worked in a café.
I had never been so happy in my life. I can't begin to describe Lisette. She was the most cheery person I knew. But she wasn't Pollyanna naive about it either. My Lisette had been around the block and decided it was better not to let life bring you down.
I never thought it would be possible to be happier but one day it happened. Lisette told me that she was pregnant after a year and a half of marriage. I was a little worried because Lisette was diabetic, but she didn't let it phase her. The nine months flew by. We bought a crib and spent three days trying to put it together. We thought of names. Lisette wanted to call a boy Peter. It took her a while to understand that there was no way I would call my son that. She hated my name for a girl. So I like the name Hedwig ok? We finally made a deal where I named boys and she named girls.
Lisette struggled through seventeen hours of labor but finally brought our little boy into the world. But before I could name him a doctor came in looking concerned. He said that the pregnancy damaged Lisette and that we should not have any more children. That threw me for a loop. In fact, I didn't even name my son Joseph like I was going to. I thought of who I really wanted to remember and honor by this name. I had to name him Albus James Ronald Sirius Remus Ruebus Potter. Lisette just shook her head. We called him A.J.
Eventually I told Lisette about the magic. She just smiled and said that she knew my hair couldn't be normal. A.J. was the most perfect boy. My wild hair only Lisette's brown color and my mother's eyes.
Then one day when A.J. was two and a half Lisette got hurt. She had a diabetic reaction when driving and ended up plowing into a brick building. She died on impact.