Previously in the Darklyverse: The Gryffindors came close to expulsion from Hogwarts when they tried and failed to cover up Emmeline's suicide attempt. Emmeline and Sirius relived their messy romantic history. James's parents contracted spattergroit, and James worried that he had learned his codependency with the Gryffindors from his mum and dad.

Revised version uploaded 26 January 2022.

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December 10th, 1977: James Potter

The upshot to Emmeline being at St. Mungo's is that James's mum is a Healer there, or at least was one before she came down with spattergroit, and knows her way around. When James owls her after breakfast asking about psych floor visitation rules, she owls back later that day. He feels like kind of an arse for asking his mum to help him do a favor for somebody else when she's basically on her deathbed, but she doesn't seem to mind, laying out everything he needs to know and asking him to say hello to the other Gryffindors for her.

The deal is this: no one is allowed to enter the floor who isn't either a patient or an employee, but there are fireplaces available for Flooing. The patients aren't allowed to travel off the floor, and technically nobody can Floo their entire body onto the floor, but you can send just your head over during pre-approved times on evenings and weekends and request to speak with a patient. Floo visits are limited to thirty minutes each. Each visitor can only Floo their head in one time each day, and each patient can only have two Floo visitors each day. Patients also have to specify the names of people who are allowed to Floo them; if someone Floos in who isn't on the list, they'll be turned away and told that the hospital can neither confirm nor deny that the patient is in St. Mungo's.

It's visiting time right now, so James tracks down Peter at the other end of the common room and tells him what's up. He knows that everyone will want to visit, but they don't want to overwhelm her or clog up the fireplaces for the other patients. He figures that Peter is the most reasonable person to ask to speak to Emmeline first—he'll want to see her the most, and she'll be the most comfortable around him.

James always thought of Emmeline as being dependent on Peter instead of the other way around, but even though Peter has been spending plenty of time with the other Gryffindor seventh years since Em got sent to St. Mungo's, he looks to James like he's sort of—incomplete, or something, without her there.

Peter gets a mouthful of ash as he pulls out of the Gryffindor common room fireplace thirty minutes later. "She's okay," he says when James waves him over and Peter pulls up a chair by him, Sirius, and Remus. "It's not great over there, and they took away her wand, but as long as she doesn't have any active suicidal crises in there, it sounds like she can mostly fly under the radar. It's when people start having delusions or start trying to hurt themselves or somebody else that they start stripping your rights away, and Em's in control of herself enough not to do that. Even if she wants to hurt herself, I don't think she will, given the consequences in there."

Remus breathes a sigh of relief, and Sirius says awkwardly, "I should go visit her. I…"

"Lily wanted a turn next," says Peter, "and then Em will be maxed out for the night. Tomorrow, though, sure. I told her to put all of us on her Floo list."

Given how Sirius and Em used to be so close, but aren't anymore, James isn't surprised that Sirius seems to be feeling some degree of responsibility for what happened to her. Still, he thinks Sirius is being unnecessarily hard on himself. He didn't make Emmeline slit her wrists, and he didn't treat her with any cruelty that James can tell to drive her to it.

"This isn't your fault, Padfoot," Remus says, clearly thinking what James is thinking.

"Yes, it is," he says, anguished. "When she needed me, I turned her away."

"You never turned her away," says James, frowning. "It was her who stopped being mates with you in fourth year, remember? Because I can certainly remember how upset you were every night over one of your best mates suddenly being gone from your life."

"Yeah, because my cousin killed her parents and she thought it was my fault. She came to me and tried to make it right last year, and I just blew her off like I didn't care anymore."

Pause, back up, pause again. What?

Remus interrupts, "Your cousin killed—?"

"Bellatrix," says Sirius disgustedly. "For the Death Eaters. She knew we were close and wanted to get to me by destroying someone I loved, apparently. Only it didn't exactly work as planned because Em didn't tell anybody until, you know, sixth year, when she admitted it to Peter and me. He reacted well. I didn't."

James's eyes flick from Sirius to Peter and back again. So this is the cement in the relationship Peter forged with Emmeline last year.

"We were almost… back in third and fourth year, we… not much really ever happened, because Bellatrix happened before it went too far. Of course I had to reject her when she wanted to pick things back up last year—I wasn't going to cheat on Marlene—but I could have let her back in as a friend, and I didn't. So, yeah, this is my fault, because Em has been drowning in grief for the last three years, and when she finally tried to tell me, I pushed her away."

"You couldn't have known," James reasons. "What happened to Em is not a normal reaction to grief. Most people don't… you know. There was no way you could have known what she was planning to do and stopped her."

But he doesn't think Sirius believes him.

Lily comes up to join James when she, too, reemerges from the fireplace. He kisses her lips and settles his hands on her waist. "Patrol time?" says Lily, and James nods.

One of the nice parts of being Head Boy and Girl is that they get to schedule all their corridor patrols together and then hang out on the job. They usually take the late-night shifts after curfew when everybody's supposed to be in their common room or dormitory, so they rarely bump into anybody and get to just talk and enjoy each other's company. Tonight is no different: the only other being that they encounter is Mrs. Norris.

"How's Em?" James asks her. "Peter said it's not so bad in there, but it can't be good."

"Yeah, I mean, she's definitely shaken up. I kind of get the impression that she's in a headspace where—she's wishing she had succeeded in… what she tried to do, but she's scared to try anything while she's in there because she's scared of the repercussions." She shakes her head, hair falling from behind her ears to cover her eyes. "I can't believe I'm having a civil conversation about my friend's suicide attempt. I mean, god… how did this become our lives?"

"Nobody saw it coming. Not even Peter knew how bad it was—she did that good a job of covering her tracks. Nobody should feel accountable for this."

"Maybe not, but we should all feel responsible for helping bring Em back from this," Lily stresses. "If everyone could accept me because I lost my best friend, then we all should be able to accept her now that she's… having such a hard time."

James nods. He feels like they keep using euphemisms to talk about what happened, like if they don't say the words it won't be real—or, perhaps, that it will minimize the pain Emmeline must have been in to do such a thing.

"Hey—unrelated question," says Lily, and James jumps on the change of subject. "How are your parents doing? Are you going home for the holiday when classes finish next week, or are you coming back to the flat with me and Sirius?"

"I'm going to your place, if that's all right. Mum and Dad are—not great. Dad doesn't think Mum has much longer, and I don't think he does, either, even with the Healer they hired taking care of them round the clock. They're not making any progress—the boils just keep getting worse…"

Lily stops walking and picks up both of his hands, squeezing them. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this is happening to you and your family, James."

He is, too. He almost lost Emmeline without having the chance to say goodbye, and now, he's losing his parents in slow motion and has no idea what to tell them in the owls he sends every week. He tells them how classes are going, how Lily and Sirius are doing, that he loves them, but it feels like just writing the words on parchment in spiky ink isn't enough to really make them understand that—he's going to be destroyed when they die, and he's terrified that it's going to happen at any moment.

Emmeline was right about one thing: maybe it is easier to deal with grief by escaping it the hard way. James isn't saying he's going to follow in her footsteps, but—well, he can see how she could be tempted.

James hasn't written to Dad about his suspicions that Dad handled Mum's spattergroit the way he did because he was too codependent with her to fathom living without her. He's been trying to break the cycle—to figure out who James is outside of Lily, Sirius, and the Gryffindors—but it's hard when Hogwarts is all about cliques and communal living. Still—and ironically—in some ways, he thinks the business of his parents dying has forced James to face his own problems in a way that makes him rely less on his friends, if only because he doesn't have any way of making them understand what it's like to be inside his head right now. No matter how many times they offer to listen to him, to a degree, he'll always be alone with this—which has meant needing to learn to be okay and keep functioning when he's trapped in bed with his thoughts every night.

He's planning on respecting Mum and Dad's wishes and staying away over the holiday—he really is—but a week later, on his first night in Sirius and Lily's flat, James looks at the small pile of wrapped gifts underneath the miniature tree Lily's brought in for the holiday, and he just—

"I'm Flooing home," he announces abruptly. He stands.

"James, are you—? Your parents' illness—"

"Just my head," he clarifies. "I won't be able to catch spattergroit if my head's in the fire, will I? The fire should—burn up all the germs or—whatever. It's not like I'll be hugging them or anything."

He has no Healing background and isn't actually confident that it works that way, but Lily knows more than he does about these things and doesn't try to argue, which he takes as a good sign. She and Sirius exchange a look, and then Sirius says, "I'll get you the Floo powder."

It takes James a few attempts before his head comes out at a fireplace near which there's anybody around to hear him calling out. It's the hearth in his mother's bedroom, and he—can't tear his eyes away from what little he can make out of her boil-covered body in the bed. It's the first time he's seen her since she was diagnosed—since before she was diagnosed, in fact, since it was Dad and not Mum who broke the news to James that she was first showing symptoms. "Mum?"

"Jamie? What are you—? You shouldn't be—"

"It's okay, Mum," says James raggedly. "I'll stay in the fireplace. You can't infect me from here."

"Honey, we didn't want this for you." Mum's voice sounds wobbly and frail. "You shouldn't see either of us like this. You should be with your fr—"

"No, I shouldn't. I should be here, with you, while I still can be."

"Jamie—"

"I messed up, Mum." He chokes on the words as they come out. He doesn't know what he's saying—he didn't plan any of this—but suddenly, it seems so clear: he can't keep hiding what he's been hiding, not when Mum and Dad are dying. There won't be time to tell them later. "Those girls died because of us. We went to that clearing. We got them killed."

"What girls? What—"

"Last June. It made the papers, remember? The two Hogwarts students who got killed by Death Eaters? They didn't go alone, Mum. They went with—with me and my friends. We were trying to do some good in the world, and instead, we got blood on our hands."

"You… went to a Death Eater meeting?" Even through her weakness, Mum sounds shocked and—not mad, but something like it. Appalled, maybe. "How could you do something like that? How could you walk in there and think everyone was going to walk out in one piece? Why—"

"I know, Mum. It was reckless and stupid, and I hate myself, okay? We all hate ourselves. Dumbledore's been icing us out all year, but I'm so scared that when I graduate and start to fight for real—"

"Sweetie, slow down. Just—stop for a moment."

James gives her a second. She rustles in the bed; he thinks she might be trying to sit up, but she doesn't appear to be able to manage it. He just wants to close the gap—to curl up in that bed with her until she soothes away his fears and makes her illness go away—but—

"You just laid quite a bit on me for a dying woman," says Mum with as much humor as she can muster.

James tries to laugh, but it comes out more like a sob. "I'm sorry, Mum. I failed you and Dad, and I—I should have been talking to you about what was going on and trying to get your advice. I shouldn't have been keeping everything hidden like I did. You're wrong about me needing to be with my friends. When I'm with them, we're in an echo chamber, and people get hurt."

"How did you even find out where to go to try and capture these Death Eaters?"

"It doesn't matter. I—"

"I can't believe you. I can't believe you—and you say you're going to do more of this when you graduate? You realize that vigilantism is illegal, right?"

"We, uh… we're working with Dumbledore, sort of. Not really yet, anyway—all we're doing right now is heading up War Stories at Hogwarts—but in a few months…"

"It's a good thing I'm dying," says Mum with as much of a smile as she can manage, "if it means I'm not going to have to watch you destroy yourself out there. God, James. You…"

He hangs his head.

"But, Jamie, you shouldn't hate yourself. I know you, and I know you've always tried to do the right thing. There's no shame in that, even if you fail sometimes."

"Isn't there? I feel ashamed all the time, Mum. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, and I should have been asking you and Dad, and I—"

"Does Dumbledore know what he's doing? If he puts you back out there in June, are you going to be safe?"

And James—doesn't know what Dumbledore's plan is. He doesn't know if Dumbledore even has a plan. But—"I don't think there's any such thing as 'safe' in this war, Mum, but somebody has to do something."

"And that somebody has to be you? It can't be the Aurors?"

"What the Aurors are doing isn't helping. Maybe we—"

"It's going to help for you to get yourself killed?"

"Mum, the Muggle-borns deserve better than this. Lily deserves better than this. I can't just… I couldn't… I know I fucked up, okay? But I can't keep living like this with no end in sight. I have to… I just have to."

"James, just—just listen to me."

He shuts up and listens.

"If we meet each other in the afterlife in six months, I'm going to kill you. Do you understand?"

Her tone is teasing—or James thinks that's what she's shooting for, anyway—but his face remains somber. "I'm not going to die, and neither are you and Dad," he insists, but he's lying, and he knows she must know he's lying, too.

"I wasn't done. I was going to say—I'm going to kill you if you die for this, but I also want you to know how very, very proud your father and I are of you. Not many people would willingly risk their own safety to try to save the world. You've always been our special boy, honey, and—and you shouldn't hate yourself. We could never hate you. Understand?"

But James doesn't understand. "I'm so mad at you for getting sick," he mutters. "I'm mad at you, and I'm even more mad at Dad for allowing himself to stay here and get sick, too. I know you were just doing your job—I know you couldn't have avoided this—but… it's like he's abandoning me, Mum, just because he doesn't want to live without you."

"So you caught onto that, then," muses Mum with a hint of a sad smile. "Your father… I didn't agree with him staying here to care for me. I wanted to go to St. Mungo's, but he insisted on caring for me—and on finding in-home care after he got sick, too. I think he just… we've been married for so long that—it makes it hard to even imagine learning to grow separately. And he didn't want to project any of that on you—we wanted you to live your own life, not get drawn back into ours."

"How do I stop it? How do I not do with Lily what you and Dad—?"

She smiles again. "I'd say I would get back to you when I figured that out, but—I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time left. You'll figure it out, sweetie. I know you will."

But James isn't so sure of that. When he gets back to the flat, he burrows into Lily's side on the couch and doesn't come out for a long, long time.

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END OF PART NINE