A/N:
Hi everyone! Last few chapters of their holidays before we're all back at Hogwarts!
This is a short one, but I we're getting into some emotional plotty stuff not entirely revolving around the war.
As ever, I hope you enjoy!
Violet knocked gently on the doorframe, poking her head around the door to smile at her daughters. It was a pattern she had repeated countless times in seventeen years, and one Rose hoped that she would repeat countless times more in the years to come - even after she had inevitably moved out to live in the perfect little flat James had created for them. "Lily-flower, Rose-petal" Violet called, Marlene reluctantly turning the music off so they could hear her. "Thank you, Marlene dear."
"Hi, Mum" Rose smiled, reluctantly saying farewell to the fun final night party they'd just been getting back into.
"Are you busy?" Violet wondered, and really it should have been obvious that they weren't. Not all that busy anyway.
Lily bounced off the bed, frowning in concern. "Why? What is it, Mum?"
"Nothing, sweetheart" Violet began softly, glancing away. "Your father wants a word before you go in the morning."
"Please tell me James and Sirius didn't blow up the garage or anything valuable while in there" Rose groaned, thinking of no other reason why her father might want to have a conversation with her before they left. It wasn't the kind of thing that Jim usually did before they went back to school.
"Of course they didn't" Violet dismissed, actually waving her hand at them. "They've been wonderfully well behaved and excellent company for your father." She smiled, but there was something off about it. "He just wants to see you both before you leave again." The emerald eyes Lily had inherited flickered over them. "You're growing up so fast, we hardly see you at all. Even less of you Rosie." Rose opened her mouth, defence upon her lips, but Violet flapped her hand at her again. "It wasn't a criticism, sweetie, just a fact. You've got your life laid out before you, you have to go and live it. Those Marauders of yours keep you busy anyway, if not out of trouble. You're happy, that's all your father and I want for you."
"Is he in the den?" Lily asked, cutting through the tension that was building.
"Oh no" Violet smiled again. "Remus is in the den. I swear, he growled at James when he teased him through the door."
"Don't mind Remmy when he's like that" Rose shrugged, decidedly avoiding the whole lycanthropy situation. "He gets territorial and irritated when James interrupts his reading time." She gained brightly. "You should see him during exam season, the crossest boy in school, that's what Remus turns into then."
Lily raised her eyebrow at Rose, clearly not buying something she'd just said, but refocused the conversation. "If Dad wants to see us, where is he?"
"Your father is in the kitchen" Violet sighed, worrying at her bottom lip in a way Rose recognised in herself. Something in the back of Rose's mind whispered that she didn't like this, but really what choice did she have in the matter? Her dad wanted to see her and Lily, it wasn't as if she wanted to refuse. Marlene and Alice smiled encouragingly as they departed for Lily's room and what was either going to be an early night, or a time for them to pursue their separate interests until Lily came back and they could interrogate her. Rose caught Lily's concerned frown and shrugged in confusion. The Marauder network of spying portraits didn't extend as far as the Evans house, much as Rose currently fervently wished it did. She was as out of the loop on this one as Lily, and she didn't care for the feeling overmuch.
Jim was pacing in the kitchen, and it was a scene from out of the past. Rose couldn't remember how many times she had seen the exact same thing - Jim pacing back and forth, rubbing his hands together, occasionally tapping at his chin, crossing his arms, and generally muttering to himself - during her childhood. It was what Jim had used to do when he was in the middle of a hard case, preparing for his closing arguments, trying to find just the right words, the right emphasis and combination to sway the judge or the jury to his side, to his argument. The sight now was something of a jarring shock. Jim was no longer a barrister, he was now a sitting judge (one looking at retirement as soon as it was felt a suitable successor could be found), so he no longer needed to formulate a closing argument. He should have no jury to sway, no judge to persuade. Rose slipped into her usual chair at the kitchen table, a heavy weight dropping into her stomach. Was this it? Was this the source of the ominous feeling that had surrounded her for the past week? She really hoped not, and not just for her sake, but for Lily's as well. Her twin sister was seated beside her, face ashen and lips twisted as she chewed on them in worry. Lily did not do well with worry, she did best with situations she could control - exams, lessons, homework, her activities with her friends - not whatever mess this was going to explode into. Jim gave a little start as he noticed his twin daughters sitting silently at the table, a fleeting expression crossing his face suggesting that he wasn't ready yet. Still, he straightened up, forced himself to relax, and took a seat opposite them. His eyes, usually so warm and vibrant, were dull and sad, and when Rose glanced behind him to avoid that gaze, she noticed an empty whiskey tumbler resting on the countertop.
"Dad?" Lily called, hopelessly young and unsure.
Jim jolted out of whatever thoughts held him captive, managing a tight smile for his daughters. The first words he said rasped uncomfortably, so he cleared his throat and tried again. "I want to preface this by saying, I haven't told anyone but your mother what I'm about to tell you." Hazel eyes fixed on Rose, needing her to listen to him. "I haven't told James and I haven't told Sirius, even though I thought I probably should have. I didn't even tell Petunia - she deserved to have her wedding and honeymoon without this hanging over her."
"Dad, you're scaring us" Rose breathed, Lily clutching at her hand under the table.
"I know" Jim murmured, face shadowed. "But I have to. Your mother is right; the no more secrets policy James was telling is about works, and by your world's standards you're both adults, so you deserve to be treated as such."
"What is going on, Dad?" Lily demanded, voice strong despite the tremor she couldn't hide.
"In all honesty, darlings, we don't know exactly" Jim replied truthfully. There was a note of helpless resignation in his voice that Rose didn't like the sound of at all. Jim laughed bitterly, a sound Rose fervently hoped she'd never have to hear her father make again. "Modern medicine is stumped."
Lily's eyes widened in horror. "You're sick?"
Jim made the same bitter laugh. "Apparently so." Rose felt something in her brain just shut down. There was no way, no way at all that her father was sick. He was the most vibrant, the most lively, the most... He was her Daddy, he couldn't be sick. He just couldn't be.
"They're wrong" Rose heard someone utter, not surprised to discover it was herself. "They have to be. You don't look sick. You're fine. You are."
Jim's eyes lost that bitter edge, filling instead with that warmth that had always been uniquely him. "I know, my munchkin, but I've been to about twelve doctors who all say the same thing: even Harley Street men. I'm dying and they can't tell me why."
"Dying?" Lily echoed, Rose feeling their joint pain like a punch to the gut. Her hands shook so much she could barely force them to squeeze Lily's tighter, trying to support her sister as much as she could. Neither of them could believe it, neither of them wanted to believe it. But... But Jim wasn't lying. Rose could tell liars easily, even in her own family. There was nothing in his eyes but truth. And if that wasn't the thing that shattered her heart, Rose didn't know what could. She could barely see out of the sheen that covered her eyes, could barely hear over the blood rushing through her ears, but it was the painful vice that squeezed her heart that Rose noticed the most. Her Daddy couldn't be dying. Didn't he know she needed him? Didn't he know that Lily needed him? That their mother did? That Tuney did? Why was the universe doing this to them? Hadn't they been through enough?!
Lily squeezed her hand back as tightly as she could, tears silently beginning to fall from hundred carat eyes. "If-if the doctors don't know what's going on, how can they know you're going to...?" Lily's voice tailed off, but her meaning was clear anyway.
Jim smiled tightly, clearly having expected that question, or asked it himself a million times since he was first told. "The only explanation that makes any sense is what the Harley Street doctor told me." Jim paused to make sure they were listening to him, not just stunned into a dull shock as he knew they would be soon. "He said that it's like a parasite - which there is no trace of and no evidence towards - is sucking all the energy out of me, that no matter the medicine, antibiotics, experimental treatments they force upon me (and I gladly take, because I'd claw my way out of hell with my nails if it was what it took to stay with my family) - that nothing works. That some thing is slowly sapping all my energy, my life force if you will, from me and soon I'll have nothing left." Jim's smile turned bitter and mocking again. "Of course they can't actually tell me how long I have. Could be a year. Could be more. Probably less." Jim waited a moment, reaching across the table to hold their free hands. His hands were colder than ever before, his eyes dark and solemn. And that was when Rose believed him - and she couldn't bear it. She wanted to run outside, tear at her hair, and scream until her voice broke and she couldn't scream any more. This was the cruellest thing that had ever happened to her, to Lily, to their family. Rose could handle Bellatrix's cruciatus curse because it happened to her - but this? To her father, who had likely never seriously hurt anyone in his life? It was cruel, it was inhuman. She would gladly suffer the cruciatus a million times if it stopped this from happening, stopped this from tearing her family apart.
"Rosie?" The touch of her twins hand, gently disenaged from her own, refocused Rose's attention on her. Lily looked a mess, eyes red and glimmering, cheeks stained with tears she hadn't realised had fallen, face pale with shock. Even though Rose could feel her heart breaking, Lily was worried for her. Rose wanted to lie and say she was fine, but she wasn't. She wasn't even in the same galaxy as fine.
"I can't" she managed to force out, a vice clamping around her chest. "I can't- I can't breathe." One look at Lily confirmed her twin was in the same situation. And wasn't it just their family's luck to have both of them with panic attacks at the same time?
Somehow their father got them to calm down enough to focus on their breathing. Just on their breathing. With time, and his soothing voice murmuring nonsense just as it had when they were children, Rose and Lily managed to get themselves under control in a situation that was so calamitously out of their control. Rose forced herself to look up, face the situation like the adult her father had trusted her to be. Much as she wanted to scream and defy the world like a child, she knew there was no escaping the realities of their situation. Willful denial would only serve to ruin whatever fragments of time they might have left. Jim looked much as Rose would expect him to. Sad, defeated, hating himself for doing this to his daughters. But he was so strong still, not pitying himself, just getting on with what he had to do. If Rose ever had a tenth of his bravery, she could face the coming war without so much as a tremor. Oh, but the way he still smiled at them, as if they hung the very stars in the sky. That much love and devotion now, it took everything Rose had not to break down and cry until she threw up.
"Are you, not okay, but better?" Jim asked, his hazel eyes scanning them in concern.
Lily managed a shaky grimace. "That was probably not the reaction you were hoping for" she murmured, voice trembling as much as her body.
"I didn't expect any particular reaction" Jim replied softly. "Just an honest one, which that was."
"It's not fair, Daddy" Lily cried, breathing deeply and slowly to control herself.
"No, it's not" Jim agreed, neither bitter nor sad. He just sounded resigned. "I shouldn't have told you like this, not on your last night before going back to school. But I couldn't tell you earlier - you were happy, and I selfishly wanted to keep you that way. I wanted to be your not-dying father for as long as I could be. I didn't want to have to see you cry." Lily glanced at Rose, the same decision weighing in their eyes. They would be strong for his sake, they had to be. He would be strong for them, and they for him. He wouldn't have to see them cry. They would cry, of course they would - Rose couple already feel the pressure behind her eyes - but they would never do so in front of him.
Lily acted first, almost throwing herself into Jim's arms, hugging him for all she was worth. "I love you, Daddy" she blurted, solemn but also sounding all of five again. A glimpse of his little girl, maybe for the last time. Jim hugged her back as tightly as he could, murmuring something Rose couldn't and didn't want to hear into Lily's dark red hair. Rose saw Lily collapse for a second before she pulled away, whispering something about their mother before fleeing upstairs. Suddenly it was just Jim and Rose left in the kitchen.
"Do you hate me for telling you, or for not telling you sooner?" Jim asked, that hesitation about his eyes.
Rose shook her head, of all the silly questions. "No, Daddy. You did what you had to do. You didn't owe us anything like that. But you told us, you trusted us enough to tell us. Oh, Daddy-" Jim opened his arms slightly, all the invitation Rose needed. Unlike Lily, Rose stepped around the table and into an offered embrace. Jim hugged her tightly, much the same as ever. Rose held back a sob, feeling her father's hands shaking slightly. That was the only thing out of the ordinary, further proof that this wasn't some sick and twisted dream.
"I do love you, Daddy" Rose told him, feeling it needed to be said. They weren't exactly a family that said it much, but Rose wanted to say it anyway.
"I know" Jim replied, whispering into her hair. "I love you too."
Rose offered him a watery smile, pulling away from the first safest place she had ever known. "You have to tell Tuney soon. She deserves to know."
"Your mother made me promise to tell her when she gets back from the Lake District" Jim sighed, sounding utterly exhausted. "She's also trying to enforce a bedtime for me" he added, trying to make her smile. It worked, just as he knew it would. He caught her hand as she went to follow after her sister. "Don't keep this to yourself, Rose-petal" Jim said quietly, looking her right in the eye. "I told you both tonight because I knew you both had people who would support you through it. Don't prove me wrong now of all times."
"I won't, Dad" Rose promised, falling just short of solemnly swearing it. Jim nodded and let her go, his gaze following her out of the kitchen.
Rose waited by the door until she heard the kitchen door close - Jim off back to the noise and chaos still going on in the garage, even at about ten o'clock at night. She walked shakily to the bottom of the stairs, sank down onto the first step, burying her head in her hands. Her eyes burned, tearducts threatening mutiny. It really didn't matter whether she held it back or not anymore, so she just stopped fighting it. Hot tears scalded her cheeks, chest burning. Her father wanted her to tell someone (probably James, Remus, and Sirius) but what was the point? Jim was dying, and there was nothing any of them, or the brightest doctors in the world, could do about it.
Thank you for reading.
Please let me know if I need to amend anything, give any warnings or whatever. I don't want to make any of you uncomfortable.