James Potter's life can be remembered in several sounds. They flash before him, quickly, as he shouts incoherently to his wife and sees a wand pointed at his heart.
Singing.
James cannot remember much of his early life, but he remembers the singing. The melodic whispers his mother would sing to him as he lay in his cot, gurgling occasionally in enjoyment. Perhaps these images aren't even memories, simply pictures he has formed based on the things his parents have told him. But he is certain the song is real.
Whistling.
The first time James was on a broom he was three years old. The broomstick had been left carelessly in their yard by his father and Merlin knew how but somehow he maneuvered it to fly. For several glorious seconds he zoomed around, the wind humming all around him. Of course, a few seconds later he flew through an open window to crash into (thankfully) a sofa. His mother had nearly lost her mind. It was at this moment that James fell in love with flying. He loves Quidditch, but he enjoys even more losing himself to the whistling wind.
Howling.
James can remember terrible stories passed around between children about what happened when they heard howling in the distance. Once an eerie sound, a thing of ghosts gone bad or dark creatures of the night, it is now a sound that makes his heart wrench a little. He knows now it is a sound of pain, when good men lose themselves to wretched curses. He has heard too much howling to brush it off as he once had. However, it is also a reminder. A reminder that he has the ability to make the wolfish cries a little softer.
Groaning.
He feels that this particular sound has followed him through an important relationship. Lily Evans, the woman who would later become his wife was on the receiving end of this noise many times. At eleven-years-old he made it a point to groan whenever she was in the vicinity, simply because he knew it irritated her. At fifteen he grunted in adolescent angst over her friendship with Severus Snape. At seventeen he found himself emitting a less familiar type of moan as Lily's lips ghosted across his skin. He is unashamed to admit that she still provokes these sort of sounds out of him, and often.
Crying.
James was never big on crying as an infant. He didn't need to, to yield his parents' attention. He was the centre of their lives from the very start. But when it is his turn to be a parent, he finds relief in the sound. The cry that let him know his son had arrived in the world, the reassuring whining that woke him up every few hours for the beginning weeks of Harry's life. It reminds him that despite whatever war or death or prophecy is looming in the outside world, his child is still breathing, albeit wailing like a banshee.
Laughter.
As long as James has been breathing, he has been laughing. Sometimes mischievously, sometimes uncontrollably, occasionally harshly but he is always laughing, or trying to make others laugh. It is the only sound that is of true comfort to him. It is the sound that he makes with his friends as they get away with some ludicrous prank. The sound that Lily makes as he kisses her neck on a ticklish spot. The sound that Harry makes as James waves his wand and makes pretty lights.
The brief, desperate, hopeful sound that escapes his lips before he fades.