The slow tick of a watch reverberated around the dim darkness of a room. Leather-strap battered and soft, it lay on the floor next to a bed like some kind of protector; a silent tracker of something invisible. There were a lot of fears that came with the night-time, and they did not always keep away in the day. Now, within those blue-tinted hours of the early morning, that watch tracked the movement of nightmares it could not understand. Neither could the one experiencing them.
James Potter did not wake with a start. He woke as though it was the thing to do, a regimental obedience teasing his head away from a pillow. Standing, eyes adjusting to the half-light, he grabbed his glasses from the floor, tied his watch around his wrist, and went to open the curtains. The infernal tick so close to the pulse in his wrist was a conversation he couldn't hear. The room stayed in dull light, the first rays of the sun hidden by clouds that betrayed nothing. Staring at the imprint of his own sleeping self, he remembered his dreams. Bare foot and yawning, he pulled the duvet straight with a slight shake of his head. They were already fading, the reality that triggered them oncoming but not realised yet.
He would never understand them. They would be played off as strangely prophetic, unexplainable, but consistent in producing a sinking feeling in the stomach. But that was the way some things were: incidental. They didn't have to mean anything.
Brushing his teeth, James grinned at his reflection, white foam contrasting with the tan of his skin. Lily had always noted the way he did this, piling his toothbrush high and grinning without any sincerity to reach as many of his teeth as possible. Child-like. One pant-leg would be higher than the other, one foot itching at the other leg as James balanced, tired but never falling. He would be seeing her later.
As if suddenly aware of his private silence, he switched the radio on, humming along to the final sounds of Frank Sinatra's 'All Or Nothing At All.'The sun seemed to have come out, lighting the room with a handful of warmth which hadn't really spread to everywhere yet. James picked out his clothes. The day stretched out ahead of him in his mind: a Friday, breakfast with friends and Lily, a few hours at the The Daily Prophet pretending to develop any photographs he'd forgotten to take and would make up over the weekend, and then the freedom of the evening in all its glory. He tied the buttons at the top of his shirt as the news bulletin came in, dancing around his room to open a window, letting the birdsong in though it did nothing to his ears when he heard the voice on his radio:
" Ladies and gentlemen, Great Britain is officially at war with Germany. I urge you to remain calm and to remember your civil duty to this government in the face of the threat of Adolf Hitler and the uncertain future. You will understand the term 'conscription' for young men. It goes without saying that we are a proud people, and so will not remain passive to the injustice and the danger that Germany pose-"
James stopped. He turned, staring at his radio as it stared right back at him, no longer listening to the words that came out of it but hearing them repeat in his head instead. The hands that were at his collar came down, mind registering the morning's revelations. James stood frozen. A silhouette stained the, now doused in sunlight, insides of a lived-in room. To the outsider, he was a toy who had been wound-up and was now stuck, the key that was at his back broken. Then, quick as he had stopped, he found his shoes, grabbed his keys, forgot his coat, and ran out into the street. Into a world that saw his worry, recognised his fear, and matched it ten-fold.
"You will understand the term 'conscription' for young men."
Amidst all that faux-patriotism, all the bright shiny words to make this sound decent and worthy and good, the streets were now full of bodies who would die and bodies who would kill. Bodies that would add to a count. Bodies of his friends. He had known about the pressures Germany was exerting, taking Austria, going deeper and deeper into uncharted territory. Working at a newspaper had only consolidated his curious, enquiring nature, had allowed him to pursue chasing stories, even if it was to photograph them, had let him learn naturally. But now, that knowledge seeped out of his brain and into a street already teeming with it. As busy as the streets were at 8:45am, the air teemed not simply with conversation. It was frenzied. Wild. But for the most part, and James knew he was right as soon as he thought of this, people were terrified.
The sun seemed an unwelcome visitor, a bringer of light into a place that would never seem light now. Crisp and autumnal, the wind sent an ache through James' bones as he waded, coat-less, through people with papers in their hands all proclaiming the same headline.
The watch tied around his wrist seemed to have known this. It had stopped ticking when James had been brushing his teeth. A few moments after, he had learned of the news.
He stopped at the cafe on the corner. Imagined his friends inside. The wind ran through his messy hair as his breath caught in his throat and he walked in. Everything was about to change.
