It's amazing how quickly your life can change.

One moment you're cleaning baby food off the carpet, idly wondering what your life would be like if you weren't tied down by the boundaries of motherhood, and the next moment you're saying goodbye for the last time, and you're wishing you could just stay with him because you love him that much that you feel like commonplace life and death shouldn't be able to keep you apart.

My life seemed perfect.

I had the perfect husband. I loved him so much and I knew he loved me – how could I not, with several years worth of love letters held together by a muggle elastic band in an old cardboard box under my bed?

We had the perfect son – so innocent and pure and just like his father; so full of life, and happiness, and beautiful, beautiful ignorance.

We had the perfect friends, or we thought we did. Friends who would go to the end of the earth for us; friends we would go to the end of the earth for. Once, Marlene McKinnon braved the wrath of Argus Filch just to bring me dinner when I was sick. That's true sacrifice for you; or it seemed like it, at age sixteen.

We even had the perfect jobs. Me, a real live mediwitch, and my husband: the sexiest auror alive (many women would tell you that said husband only came second to a certain dog animagus … I would disagree).

But I must have done something wrong. Why else would this have happened? Why, if not because I once had a crush on Marlene's boyfriend, or because I called Tuney a stuck-up brat when I was twelve?

This sort of thing doesn't happen to people who have done all the good things in life; it shouldn't, anyway. Because I can hear my husband hit the floor in the room below us – I can see the flash of green through the cracks in the floorboard and I feel like my heart just stopped beating and my ears are ringing and it's tearing me apart inside and I know – I know – that I won't live through this night.

And I'm trying so hard not to scream because my beautiful little baby boy is in here with me and I know I have to make the most of my last moments with him.

I'm shaking as I lower myself down to look at him through the little bars on his cot. I want to curl up on the floor and cry but instead I'm talking softly, urgently, and hoping that some day he might remember this: the night his mother says goodbye.

I don't even know what I'm saying. Maybe it's the adrenaline; the panic. All I can really think is that he needs to know how much he is loved – I need to tell him, before it's too late and I never get to tell him again. I'm looking at his little face – he's confused, I think, and the tiniest bit worried – and only just now really noticing how much he looks like his father.

There's one thing I'm absolutely certain about, and that's that he'll make me proud.

But I only get a few seconds with him, because all too soon the door is blown off its hinges and I can feel the whole bloody British orchestral population playing at full pelt in my chest and I'm going to be sick. And I'm begging. And I'm screaming now and there's nothing I can do about that because he doesn't understand, he doesn't understand that there's no way I'm stepping aside. Because Harry's my son. My little boy.

Because James told me to take Harry and run, and because I feel like I've failed James and I don't want to feel like that. And maybe, a little, because I just hate this pitiful excuse for a man so much that even if he told me to take Harry and leave I'd do the exact opposite just to spite him.

And then I'm dead.

And as the green light is rushing towards me I'm thinking; if it's amazing how quickly your life can change, then it's bloody unbelievable how quickly your life can disappear.

The End.

Well, that was depressing! Let me know what you think? I don't write serious stuff all that often and I'm not sure how it turned out ...

Riley Erin :)