All Hollow's Eve
"Do you think he knows who I am?"
A man and a woman stand side by side in their nursery. Their baby snores in the crib in front of them as the man's arms hold his wife tight.
He chuckles, "I hope he does after a year."
He kisses her cheek, she smiles, and then silence.
Silence of comfort, two people completely in love taking strength from each other as the world around them falls to pieces.
Silence of fear, two people at the heart of conspiracy never knowing what could happen.
They never know what could come next.
"Sometimes, he looks at me and I see it, you know? I see that need he has of me as his mother, but other times he's as transfixed with his toys as he is with my hair."
"Lily," he leans his head into the crook of her neck, "how could you imagine for a moment that this boy doesn't love you?"
A single tear falls that neither notice.
"Because, because after this is over and he grows up and someone else kisses him goodnight, and sings to him, and tells him they love him. After this is over and he looks at someone else and calls her mother, I wonder if he'll ever close his eyes and see me and wonder."
Arms fall as he steps backward. Steps away as if her words were are poison.
And for all they know, her words could be.
"How… How could you say that?"
"James… James I just can't pretend like you. I can't pretend that everything is going to be okay." A whisper, a quiet truth that has none of the hope both desperately need. They're bound together. If her hope dies, his perishes along with it.
"Lily, I don't want to. I don't want to hear anymore of this!"
"James, please, I didn't mean to upset you."
She is the face of serenity even as her insides shake with fear. He walks out of their child's room and she lingers for a moment as she looks once more at her child and thinks that he is so beautiful, so beautiful.
When she was young, she wondered how it would feel to know she was going to die.
She imagined herself, old and crippled, waiting in a warm bed with her husband and kids and grandkids all surrounding her.
She imagined an illness that slowly ebbed away at her life until she could no longer hold on.
She imagined being alone in a house, her husband long dead, and going to sleep knowing that tomorrow, she won't wake up.
In all her thoughts she never once imagined it could be like this.
Her sitting in her husbands arms. Her baby playing on the floor in front of them. Her face free of even a single wrinkle.
She is too young.
Once, when she was seventeen, she imagined a tragedy. A car crash, a potion gone awry, a slip and fall down some stairs, or even that terminal disease coming to her forty or fifty years before her time should have been up.
She imagined a beautiful funeral where people would cry silently while listening to her eulogy and whisper to themselves that she was so young. They would look at her coffin and shake their heads sadly because it is such a tragedy. Such a tragedy they would repeat as they made their way over to James and hugged him as if that would make all his pain go away.
And then it would be over.
"James," she calls as she walks out onto the balcony and puts her arms around him leaning her head on the back of his shoulder.
"If you forget who you are, Lily, then you will die and I will die and Harry will grow up knowing neither one of us."
It was a solemn prediction. Something she has thought of before in the darkness of night. A time of night when she allows death to swarm her. She could never be like him, who puts all of his trust in the honor of those he loves most. It took her years to trust him as she does now even as it took him seconds to look at her and know his heart safe within her grasp.
"Maybe I'm embracing it, James. Maybe this is our destiny."
"To die? How is that a destiny?"
"No, James, to be his hero. To sacrifice so our child can live. We aren't who he wants. Maybe we're here to make sure he never gets it."
"Lily, we are safe. No one but Peter and Sirius knows where we are. No one but them. Close your eyes and think of the future. In a year from now, two years from now, this, all of this, will be a crazy joke. A bad past we never speak a word of again but kill me now if I won't live to see his second birthday, his tenth and eleventh and…"
"You know, I never once thought of him growing old." Her voice rings out steady as she feels his body shake.
"What?"
"Well, it's just I never once imagined what he would be like at graduation or his wedding or even his first time at King's Cross. It has always been if his smile will be like yours or if his hair will be soft or just his hand curled inside my own."
"James?"
"Hmmm."
"We should stay up all night long."
"What? Lily that's…"
"No James, it isn't. I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to close my eyes. I want… I want to sit in your arms for hours and watch the sun as it begins to rise." A few tears leak from her eyes and he finds the pain of her words transforming into his love for her, his need to please her every desire.
"You're crazy, do you know that? You're bloody insane and it makes me love you so much."
It is as much of a "yes" as she would ever get from him.
His back slides down against the wall. Her body falls in the space between his legs and his arms encircle her, hold her with all the strength he has. She leans her head back on his shoulder.
"I love you," she whispers quietly and he kisses her cheek.
"I love you, too."
They sit there all night waiting, just waiting for the inevitable beauty of the sun to rise. Hours later, her eyelids fall over her eyes and she sleeps. His fall moments afterward. An hour later the sun rises.
Wake up, it's Halloween.
End
Disclaimer: Everything from hp books belongs to JK Rowling