His breath is long and even but I can hardly hear it. I put my ear close to his chest, red hair falling down around him. His baby chest, I see it moving up and down.
I sit cross-legged on the floor, nose poking through the bars and watch. His chest continues to rise and fall. I breathe with him, softly, silently. My fingers curl around the bars. I watch, cannot move myself from him. Won't move from him.
His father sleeps on the bed beside his cradle. He lays stretched out, a tuft of unruly black hair jutting out from his head, glasses sliding down his face. He is sprawled and sleeping and tired. His hand curls around his wand and he is still dressed in street clothes as if he were going somewhere or had just got back. His shoes flake dirt onto my hands as I take them off. He doesn't move, doesn't snore, doesn't breathe.
"Breathe! Breathe!" I tell him off.
A puff of air escapes his lips and I turn back to Harry.
They lay there and breathe. I watch, too torn to sleep. Full of aching longing. I curl onto the rough hardwood and listen, watch, breathe. They breathe back. My neck aches when I wake to James bespectacled face pulling me up to the bed.
"You're freezing."
I mumble, reach for his warm hands and listen for Harry's breath. He is crying for milk and I cradle him, groggily pull him to myself. I love him. James is in his pyjamas now, and I am too. He has cradled us both in a thick woolen blanket. He is kind and I lean against the kindness. I curl my body around his and he gently, gently hugs back.
We fought tonight, faces contorted, wands drawn. My voice went high-pitched and frantic. His turned cold and pretend apathetic. We are bored and frightened. The war is on our doorstep and rings loudly in the long silence of passing days and nights. Harry breaks and makes the monotony.
Each day James paces like a guard on duty, itching for action. He bounces on his heels at rattling from the house-elf Mumu, glares at her ugly, innocent mother face as if she ought to be quieter. She helped raise him, she is not to be frightened into silence. She smiles placidly back. I am glad. Her noise pacifies me, gives me a sense of normalcy. I think she knows.
He barked at Harry for crying, a rough father voice that wails in the same tenor as a Harry wail. Shook his finger at the wind for rattling the windows. Scowled at the fire for not burning bright enough. Polished the oak front door and the brass handle as if expecting company.
I was no better.
Harry was down for a nap and I was itching for something, anything useful to do. I brewed in the boiler room, frigid as Mad Edward passed in and out the door, haggardly silver, acting mournful as if nobody has had a worse century of it. I brewed for the Order, my hands smelly with giant squid tentacles and dragon blood. I chop and chop and chop. I hang sprigs of mistletoe to poison the fireflies that nestle in the old boards and sting Harry while he naps, slung tight to my hip.
That done, I itch with uselessness. I charm the door James polished, stepping over him in stag form at the front door. He has gotten hair all over the carpet and I toss my head. I glare and purse my lips. I want to fight. So does he.
Anything to break the monotony.
He flashes back to the thin, tall man with crazy hair. I flare at him.
"I told you! Don't be a stag in the house! It creates a smell and you know we can't open the windows!" I sound like a snooty housewife and wince inwardly at the sound of my own voice.
"Fine!" He is growling, he sounds like Sirius. "Fine, then." A blast of air shoots from his wand and gathers the stag hair into a migrating hurricane of smelly fur, but does not stop there.
"You want the windows open? We're a perfectly capable pair of witch and wizard, aren't we, then?" And he opens the windows, a look of mad relief etched on his face. I revel in the smell of fall. I breathe it in, then flare up again as I feel Harry move against my thigh.
I slam the window shut. Fall is circumvented and the look of relief on James face remains frozen, as if he is in the full body lock. Harry has woken and cries for his milk. I ignore his bleating for the moment and watch my husband with pent-up energy, transferred to anger.
"What is it you want?" I screech, beyond reason. "Voldemort to show up on our doorstep?" I give a horrible laugh and Harry cries louder. My instincts urge me to care for him, and I reel the loose parts in. I gather Harry to my breasts, trembling, near to tears. I force myself to calmness, shooshing Harry, trying very hard to be perfect for him. I lower myself onto the couch and gather comfort from the soap smell of his black hair, the baby freshness of him.
James has stalked off and I hear him rattling in the kitchen. Harry is finished and grabs a handful of red hair from my scalp. "Muhhmuhhmuhhhmuhmmmmuh." He grins, a ten teeth in grin and baby-dives out of my hands and half crawls, half toddles to his play box.
James lurks in the doorframe, Rosmerta's watered down apple juice in a bottle shaped like a dragon. It spurts out a lick of apple juice then sucks it back in, blinking it's horribly real orange eyes at Harry who is clapping and cooing in glee. I force myself not to smile and turn from James, hunch myself into the sofa.
Harry slurps and plays. I feel terribly tired and my fingers itch to do something all at once. I feel James sit next to me. He does not speak but a flagon of butterbeer appears in front of me a moment later. I grudgingly grab hold of it and take a sip. James is taking gulps of something that smells like fire whiskey.
I turn to glare at the offending mug. "You know I can't! That is terribly rude."
"Oy! It's been so long! Besides, it's about time Harry learns to eat solids, isn't it? You want some?"
I glare at him but relent. It has been a long time. I take his mug and drink deeply, feel hot tears pricking against my eyelids. I hate that I'm irrational. I feel as though I'm going mad, and I love them so!
"I don't really care if you're a stag in the house." I say thickly. I am tipsy off two mugs.
"And I don't really want the windows open." James is just as tipsy. It has been a very long time, and it seems to be particularly strong whiskey. "I mean, I do. But I don't. But I do." He is half incoherent and I love him for it. (He makes more sense that way, anyhow.)
"What I'd really like to do is go out. Like out. We could take Harry to the park. He could see the birds. I could take him for rides on my back. He could play in the bark chips." He smiles lopsidedly and droops a little.
I lift my wand and conjure songbirds. James turns into Prongs and Harry rocks about on James's back, grabs hold of his antlers. James lets out a high graceful note as I keep hold of Harry's tiny body. Harry shrieks in glee and the afternoon slides into soft evening.
But the glass lies thick between us and the smoldering sunset. James's hands lie fingerflat against the cold window as Harry sleeps. I am stalking again. Cabin-fever is upon us. A game of wizard's chess lies forgotten on the coffee table. The Weird Sister's chant an odd ditty.
And then we fight. Love is painful without reprieve and we feel it to the bones.