DISCLAIMER: The Harry Potter series is the rightful property of J.K. Rowling.
ORIGINAL DATE: October 31, 20(?)
SYNOPSIS: Halloween has always had significance for James his whole life, from the beginning to the end.
FEATURED CHARACTERS: James Potter, Lily Potter, Harry Potter
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Due to my original account being closed (see main profile for more details), I have elected to re-upload this story on my new account.
The story was originally written before the information on the Potter family was released on Pottermore.
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JAMES POTTER
My Favorite Day Was Halloween
~o~
Ever since I was a young boy, I considered Halloween to be my favorite day of the year. My parents indulged my wishes to join the muggle children in our village in those funny costumes to collect sweets and treats in a tradition called "Trick-or-Treat." In the end, we always pooled our spoils and got a tasty share of all the goodies.
My enrolment to Hogwarts changed our little tradition. I spent Halloween in the castle, enjoying the entertainment provided from the ghosts and occasionally the dancing skeletons, and feasting on the wide variety of delicious treats at the Gryffindor table, from the iced cakes to the ice-creams. As the years passed, we would dress in costumes against Moony's better judgment and terrify the living daylight out of the first years.
It was worth the detentions.
You could say I was at my happiest that time of year. It was the day when my father and I were partners in crime. Then, there came the Halloween where he wasn't there anymore. The hollowness that remained leeched the joy I usually felt. I'd walk into his old study as I did as a child, but I wasn't of bounding around with flippant joy at the thought of sitting by the crackling fireplace with my parents, playing the game of choosing the best sweets to taste.
The fireplace was dark and the void of dancing flames that Dad would conjure, changing colors at my requests. No candy wrappers littered the Persian carpet. My father's armchair was cold and the smoke of his pipe still lingered on the fabric. The room was cold like his crypt in the cemetery. I'd run my hand over the arm of the chair where I sat as a boy. I'd stopped crying a long time ago. Now, I didn't think I had any more tears to shed. He never got to see me graduate from school. A few years later, I lost Mum too.
I couldn't stay in the family manor anymore. Their memories were everywhere. There was more than just Halloween haunting these walls, but birthdays and Christmases and Easters, and too many stories that I could bear. Sirius, Remus, and Peter were the ones who pulled me out of the dark, who made me see that there was more to just the grief. And then there was Lily, who brought out those old smiles again. For a while, I never thought I could smile again.
It was great to know that I could.
Halloween was still my favorite day of the year; that was until my wedding day, and then the day that Harry was born. By then, I'd dusted off my broomstick and taken to the air again, to make my parents proud, and feel alive again. Not to feel like an orphan, but to be the man that I knew was inside me, the one I was always going to grow into.
I'm James Potter, I'd tell myself. It's time to grow up.
And I did, but to be honest, I was always a child on the inside, and everyone knew it. Who else would get on a flying motorcycle with Sirius Black and get chased by muggle policemen while being chased by Death Eaters, and still laugh about it all at the end of the day?
Harry was a few months old on his first Halloween. Lily laughed so hard when she saw our little toddler dressed as an orange, puffy pumpkin, eyes wide in bewilderment at Dadaputting him in an odd outfit. I knew she didn't approve, but she thought he looked cute.
I couldn't have predicted the next one, but those circumstances leading to it had been different. I was sequestered in our little cottage, our home and safe house since the Potter Manor. Was it catching dust? I didn't know. The days trailed away, but visits from friends weren't enough anymore. Playing with Harry was an upside. His laugh could make a stone laugh. Day by day passed. My birthday, then Lily's, our friends', then Harry's. We started to talk about what to get him for Christmas. Not a broomstick. Sirius had taken care of that.
More days passed.
Halloween was just another day now.
Harry fussed at any costume directed at him, so we had tea and a bit of cake. He flew on his broomstick and I nearly hit my head trying to keep him from bouncing off the walls. Our cat, poor Oberon, was in hysterics at Harry trying to pull his tail—again, ("He doesn't understand that he isn't supposed to," Lily would say) and Oberon would yowl so loudly that Harry would cry, still trying to pull Oberon's tail. I would have laughed but Lily did not approve.
So I took Harry away from Oberon and set him on my lap like my father did when I was still small enough not to break his knee. Little Harry, my boy, looked up at me, his spring green eyes—so like his mother's—blinked as the tears seeped out.
"No need to cry, Harry," I assured him, bouncing him on my knee. I grinned as he started to laugh. It always made him laugh.
He was so innocent. My heart twisted at the thought of Voldemort hunting him down. Why my son? I thought. He's just a baby. He can't do anything. He should have a better future than just hiding in a cottage all his life. He should be able to go out and play in the snow at Christmas. He should be allowed to have fun at Halloween and Easter. I'd take him, just like my father took me, out to 'Trick-or-Treatings'.
"Dada," Harry said in his little baby voice, poking at my pocket. "Pwetty lights?"
For a baby, he knew what he wanted, I had to admit it. Pretty lights. Sometimes I wished Remus never showed him in the light works when he came to visit. Harry would beg to see them all the time, so much that by the time he got tired of it, we were all exhausted. When Remus wasn't here, I had to show him the pretty lights instead.
Showers of sparkling beams, harmless fireworks, erupted from my wand into the air, dancing around us like a shower of meteors. Harry clapped and laughed. Pretty lights. His favorite was the green, like his eyes. His mother's eyes.
"More, more, more," he sang.
It was impossible not to grin at his enthusiasm. A slight movement near the doorway alerted me to Lily's presence, observing out little game. I peeked at her when Harry wasn't looking and saw the beautiful smile on her face.
The colorful lights became gold sparks and then glistening bubbles, and then puffs of smoke, in different colors and shapes. My eyes blurred with weariness after a while. How this kid was still wide awake was a mystery to me; I was about to doze off.
"Happy Halloween," I said, kissing the top of Harry's head as I made the orange smoke into a pumpkin, like the ones Mum used to carve, or the brown ones into the pipe that Dad used to smoke. Lollipops and chocolates and other little treats danced in front of Harry. I beamed as he tried to grab them out of the air.
"Next year we'll get some candy, yeah?" I asked him softly. Harry looked up at me with his moon-bright green eyes and grinned, showing off the little white teeth growing in.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he sang.
I heard a soft shuffling of footsteps behind me. There was my Lily, eyes gleaming wearily as she bent over the two of us.
"James, it's time for Harry to go to sleep now," she said gently. "It's past his bedtime."
"Already?" I checked the time. "Ah, well, little guy, we'll take this up tomorrow."
Lily shook her head fondly as she took Harry from my arms. He pouted but one smile from Mama put him at ease. I dropped my wand on the sofa, my hand cramping from the spells, and I stretched as I got up. It was a quiet Halloween, one of the quietest I'd ever had since Dad's passing. I promised myself that the next would be better. Maybe Harry would be able to go outside, and hopefully, by then, Voldemort would be gone.
I wrapped my arm around Lily and Harry, kissing my wife lightly on the lips. Harry made a face of disgust and we both laughed at his innocence.
"When you get a girlfriend I'll do the same, then," I teased him, poking him playfully in the side.
"James, that's not—" Lily started.
I never got to know what she was going to say.
It was less than a minute, but in heartbeats, it felt eternal. From the silence of the night, a crashing explosion reverberated through the entire house. Without question, I raced into the hallway to see what it was and realized too late that heartbeats were the least of my worries.
Not him, I thought. Not now.
"Lily, take Harry and go!" I yelled; panic rose inside my chest. He was here for Harry, my son. I didn't look to her as she began to hurry towards me. "It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"
I didn't see Lily run passed me, but I felt her go, like a part of me leaving my body forever. I reached into my pocket for my wand, but there was nothing there. My heart froze. Blood rushed to my head. No wand. Where was my wand? My eyes flickered to the living room, where my wand sat on my couch, abandoned because of my stupidity.
The chances of my making it to my wand were little to nothing. Harry, I thought, Lily. I'd never see them again. Is this what Dad went through at King's Cross that day? Did he stand there, perfectly aware that his next actions would have a lasting effect on my forever, but if I was still alive by the end of the day, then it was worth it?
I could remember it as if it were yesterday. I'd been laughing with Remus and Sirius about something while Peter struggled to keep up with us when I saw them, my parents, waiting for me and Sirius so we could all go home. It was simple, at the end of sixth year, to think that the only thing to worry about now was N.E.W.T.s in seventh year. I was only feet away from Mum when the screams had begun when Death Eaters had attacked the station.
Panic had escalated to pandemonium as parents scrambled around to get to their children or older kids to find their younger siblings. Some of us instinctively began to fight, to protect who we could and who couldn't defend themselves. I hadn't noticed the Death Eater behind me until my father rammed into me out of nowhere, pushing me out of the way as the killing curse hit him. He'd fallen in front of my eyes, like a marionette whose strings had been cut, and I could see the lights draining from him into nothingness, an empty void where he'd never see me again.
He'd died to save me. Now I would die to save Harry.
I didn't hear the words that took my life, but I felt it hit me. It wasn't a sharp pain over my heart so much as a pinprick, but then everything was distant, like a hazy, soundless dream. It was gentle as touching clouds or floating on a calm lake, falling into a blissful slumber where all I could see where the people I loved. Lily. Harry. My parents. My friends.
Halloween was my favorite day of the year when I was a child, and it was throughout most of my life. Never had I ever dreamed, in a million years, that it would be my last day on this earth.
~o~
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Due to the closing of my previous account, all my posted stories were no longer available for reading. To my readers, both new and old (possibly), I apologize for the inconvenience. I hope you continue to enjoy this story.
ORIGINAL AUTHOR'S NOTES:
When I first read this part of the book, I cried for a long while. I know many people don't really seem to like James Potter that well because of the James-Lily-Snape plotline, but I love James' character, and I wish we could have seen a bit of the development of the character in real time rather than from just learning about him from conversations and Snape's memory.
Song of the chapter: Regina Spektor – The Call (I'd recommend listening to it while reading.)
Opinions would be nice. I know it's not the best, and to be honest, this comes from my own fan-fiction of the Marauders' days at Hogwarts where yeah, James would be a prat, but the death of his father would sort of mature him up a bit. I'm not sure if I'd get around to writing it, but I'll let you know if I do.
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Ciao for now,
Lady.Artemis.Isis.13