Lily and James' hands were entwined between one another, their fingers shaking as they clung to each other like lifeboats, though they had long since died. Lily's hand was slightly sweaty, as it always was when they saw their boy when they watched over the terrible maladies that came upon them.

It would've been more torturous never to know what happened to him, so they endured their pain with steel in their gut. Day after day, they watched him, watched with words upon their lips that they feared they never would be able to express to him, though they knew that things for them, people who had done well all their lives, who had lived and died for love, would turn out.

The pain would not be suffused by the assurance of tranquility and the ultimate resolving of all issues - all that happened to their boy was still deeply felt by them. They had watched him stumbling over his own feet as he learned to walk, encouraged by a demon with a beer in his hand, the demon so funnily called Angel. To them, Harry's guardian was an Angel, despite his sins, despite his faults.

Lily's eyes watched, boggling from her sockets, as her boy thrust himself bravely between a vengeful Angel and the girl that he so clearly loved. Because they knew he loved her, even if Harry didn't know it himself, perhaps. But they watched him, and they watched him with the tender, outside view that they had, and though they granted him his privacy even though they knew he didn't know they were watching over him, they knew enough of his interactions with the young hound to understand his feelings.

Lily and James knew what it meant, the way they hovered around one another, the stolen looks neither saw, the secret drawings under Harry's mattress, and Loona's attempts to draw him, as well. Harry's parents had been crushed when they learned of their boy's fate when they found their precious child nowhere near their arms when they arrived in Heaven, and as time progressed, their fear grew stronger and stronger - they feared for Harry's soul, for the endurance of Harry's love. But as time progressed, they found the beauty and happiness that there still could be in a place like Hell.

They found tenderness in the eyes of his guardian, young, pure love in the eyes of the hound, and they found magic everywhere that Harry went because Harry was magic in and of himself. The amounts of times their breath caught in their throats when Angel left a bare wire in Harry's reach, a knife too close to the edge of the table, was more than they could count. Still, Harry's kindness and perseverance were contagious to all around him despite his circumstances, despite the injustice that was his life.

Every day they found more and more reasons to respect him, to trust in the eternal salvation of his soul, but now that he stood defying an Angel, they feared for the demise of everything that they had assured to one another all this time. They held each other tight as his obscurus unfurled like a sly octopus and watched in fascination and fear as Harry tortured the Angel with his clear superiority. It was clear to them from the very first moment that their boy had the upper hand in the fight, but the fear came more from the blank bloodlust apparent in Harry's face, his sudden disconnect from reality and good.

That thing inside Harry was not Harry himself, and though Lily and James knew this, they feared for what it might mean for Harry, the innocent vessel suffering from his fate, from the inner darkness he carried. They knew that Harry was good and that he would be saved by all that was right, but it was still disconcerting and worrying.

They observed the battle, simultaneously shocked, impressed, and horrified by the extent of Harry's raw power - they knew he was brilliant, powerful. Still, they had never understood the full range of Harry's reach until that moment, when he enveloped the Angel in a cloud of deadly black and scorched it, leaving it fuming on the ground. Lily felt she could've fainted when the other two Angels turned on him - surely they were meant to flee. Why put up a fight with him?

Could they not smell the humanity in him, the vitality? Did they not understand that Harry was not a creature to be harmed? But, then again, they were thoughtless, machine-like in many aspects, and Harry was a massive obstacle in their calculated job - to cleanse Hell. The first time Harry had been caught in the claws of an Angel, they could not believe what they had watched - they had thought that he would be touched by one of their deadly swords and, perhaps, hopefully, not be sent into the blackness of inexistence, but rather into their loving arms. After all, Harry was not dead, and so still had his death, his reckoning due.

But he had defended himself wonderfully and fled, still a vulnerated child. He was no child now. Watching him, his incredible growth and display of power in the face of the danger for the girl he cared so much about, they understood with profound sadness that Harry's childhood had slipped between their fingers and that they would never be able to smell that childish scent on the top of his head, and that the first big things in Harry's existence would never be theirs to share with him. They had subconsciously known it would be the case since Voldemort has stalked them and set them apart, but a small part of them hoped that all their wishes and desires would come true. But life, even the afterlife, held no such treasures.

Heaven thought it might be, and they were still missing the love of their child. They may have been happy and serene, as all creatures were in Heaven, but they felt the longing for Harry and spent their blissful moments as if in wait for something like there was something still due. Harry was due. They cheered their child on, and they watched him falter, just as they always had since they had access to see him, and they would never lose their nervousness and raw emotion as they observed the many ups and downs of Harry's adventures. And then, when the girl was taken by the Angel, dragged to what they thought would be her certain death, their boy put himself between her and death, much as Lily had done to preserve her own boy.

Tears escaped her silently as she saw the clear reflection of herself in him - his eyes, his height, his general demon form was so drastically different from their bodies. However, still, Harry was the spitting image of his mother, and they differed in nothing, not even in the sacrifice they would make for those they loved.

Lily gripped James' arm hard, finally expecting what they had been waiting for to happen as the Angel's blade plunged into Harry's taut body. They stood rigid in expectation: would he come to them, or would he be stolen forever, and they would be set free to begin mourning that should've taken place a long time ago? Deep down, in a silent plea unsaid but deeply felt, both James and Lily willed the weapon to spare Harry, not to end him in such a way.

Though they were finally prepared for that something to happen, strangely enough, Harry was unharmed by the blade's touch, and he fled with his girl, unscathed. So, there it was. More factors to consider, more anomalies to come. There was such a nebula of uncertainty that even Heaven seemed strange in the cloud of anticipation that watching Harry was. Their rest would not come easy, and neither would their boy, it seemed. Lily dug herself into her husband's arms and felt the warmth he gave to her.

Together, their bodies wound in that manner, and they could almost feel as if their combined love and happiness could account for Harry, maybe even translate itself to their joy, their stolen child. She set her forehead on his chest, and he set his chin down on her head. In that way, they stayed, ever-waiting for their son.