Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N: Hey everyone, Happy Halloween! This is the last chapter of this story, seeing as they're 21. I had to wait to post this until today in honour of the anniversary of their death (the 39th). As always, I hope you enjoy reading this. xx HogwartsPrincess89

For him it was sacrificing himself for her, for them. Peter had betrayed them but it didn't matter now. He hoped Lily got Harry out but that didn't matter either. Because he was about to die, of that he was sure.

He had no wand and he was faced against the most powerful wizard besides Dumbledore, the Dark Lord, old Voldypants himself. Idly, he wondered how old Voldemort was.

"Lily run! I'll hold him off." Voldemort laughed, high and cold and it sent shivers down his spine but James Potter stood his ground. He stood like a boxer; fists raised, trying to protect his family with his body.

There was a flash of green light and he thought of Harry first. Of his poor sweet son. Then he remembered everything he had ever thought and felt about Lily. Every memory of her, good and bad. His last thought was of her with her arms around him when she had told him to ask her out in seventh year. And then he thought no more.

For her it was the feeling of her heart being ripped out of her chest because she had spent so much time hating him and too little loving him and now he was gone. She screamed and felt the pain of it so sharply she almost dropped Harry to the ground.

James. Not James. Not brilliant alive wonderful James. Her James. Her husband. Her everything. She was crying and screaming and so was Harry and there was no escape. She heard Voldemort's cloak as it brushed the stairs and steeled herself.

Pull yourself together Evans, she imagined James saying. "Potter." She corrected his voice in her head. She sobbed once more and placed Harry in the cot, spreading her arms in front of him. Trying to use her body as a shield as James had done.

"Stand aside." He said it so many times she wondered if someone had asked him to spare her. Severus. She thought with alarming clarity, the kind that comes with imminent death.

"No." She declared, and was surprised to find she wasn't even shaking. She didn't want to leave Harry. She desperately did not want to leave him but she knew, as the charms master she was, that dying for him just might save him. It was the only chance. She would see James again soon.

"Avada kedavra!" And she was seeing all of Harry's first moments and then her mind was filled with sensations of James. His smell his smile his laugh, his ridiculous hair. Tears were pouring down her face but she paid them no heed. His eyes were the last things she saw until she saw no more.

She fell into his arms in the afterlife, he had refused to go on before her, waiting. Then they waited together for their son, and felt relieved and devastated when he did not join them.

LEJP

Lily and James watched their seventeen-year-old son with bated breath; Sirius, Remus, Nymphadora, and Fred standing behind them. He was walking to his death.

"C'mon, figure out the stone Harry." James was murmuring, even though he knew Harry couldn't hear them. But he stopped put his lips to the snitch and said words that froze Lily's heart.

"I am about to die." And suddenly they were back. It had been sixteen years but they were back although not quite back but Lily could smell and she could see. She could see her son. He looked so much like James, they were even the same height, but he clearly had her in his features too and it wrenched her heart to see him so close.

She gasped and reached out for him but she could not touch him. "You've been so brave." She thought she could never look at him enough. Her baby boy.

"You are nearly there," Said James. "Very close. We are…so proud of you." His voice stuck and Lily smiled empathetically at him.

"Does it hurt?" The question was addressed to Sirius so he luckily missed the agonizing look his parents shared. He had grown into an amazing person, even without them.

"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

"And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over," Remus assured quietly.

"I didn't want you to die." Harry said suddenly. "Any of you. I'm sorry—" Lily shook her head, willing him to see she had wanted to die for him. He wouldn't understand until he had children, which she guessed he wouldn't now. Although…she was a master of charms and knew the implications of Voldemort taking his blood. She had hope.

Harry had turned to Remus, beseeching him. "—right after you'd had your son…Remus, I'm sorry—"

"I am sorry too." He responded in that calm reassuring way of his. "Sorry I will never know him…but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life."

Lily watched him stir, remembering why he had called them. The four of them shared a look. This was his decision, they would not be urging him in any direction.

"You'll stay with me?" Harry asked softly and Lily's heart almost broke. She saw from the looks on the other three's faces that they felt the same. She could only imagine how Nymphadora and Fred and Harry's grandparents watching from above felt.

"Until the very end," said James and Lily was filled with unending love for her husband.

"They won't be able to see you?" Asked Harry. And Sirius' answer almost made Lily cry. It did make James cry.

"We are part of you," said Sirius. "Invisible to anyone else."

Harry looked straight at her and she smiled genuinely, lovingly. Wishing she had known him and wishing, more than anything, that she could touch him, hold him. But she could not. And he did not need that right now.

"Stay close to me." And this time Lily did cry, marching silently beside the bravest man she had ever met, her wonderful, amazing baby boy. Some death eaters appeared and still they walked beside him. Soon they reached the clearing that held the Chief Death Eater himself.

"I thought he would come," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping flames. "I expected him to come."

For a second no one spoke. "I was, it seems…mistaken," said Voldemort.

"You weren't." Harry said, dropping the stone. And then they vanished and she could not see her fellow other-worldly companions but she knew they were still there because so was she. All of them were there with Harry. Until the very end.

And then the green light was shooting towards Harry and someone stumbled into her and found her hand and she knew it was James. She was struck with flashbacks of her own death and terrified at her son's fate. Her and James were squeezing each other's hands so tightly it would have broken bone, had they had any bones to break.

The light hit him and they were shoved back into the next world. Harry was dead. And then very suddenly, he was alive again and Lily was once more so happy and so sad. They would see him again someday.

James pulled her close and they sobbed into one another, everyone giving them space. "He's so brave." She whispered.

"He gets it from his Mum." James replied and she choked a laugh before resuming watching her son.

"And his father." She responded softly.

"And his godfather!" Sirius added. Lily chuckled.

"And himself."

She leaned into James and thought of how lucky she was for her two brave boys.

A/N again: I never thought of how hard it would be for James, Lily, Remus, and Sirius to walk with Harry to his death and now I am not okay. I don't think I'll ever look at this scene the same way again, but The Forest Again is still my favourite chapter of all time, because of its tragic beauty.