A/N: my contribution to the Review's Lounge Birthday challenge.

A PIG IN MUD

(James Potter)

By MatoakaWilde

The year James Potter was born spring came early. Pungent floral fumes dominated the senses and forbade winter access another day. The sun beat powerfully upon the land and its inhabitants so that none who ventured out in the bright heat stayed dry for long.

His mum remembered those early days well. She had awaited motherhood for so long that when it had finally come, she felt as if in some past life she had already been the mother to her little dark haired son. Without need of pictures, single scents of sweat honeysuckle or musky lilac could bring back to her memories more realized than any photograph. Afternoons would return to her, of sunning her new baby on a paisley patterned blanket and speaking to him in a singsong voice, "Do you like this flower? Can you hear that bird?"

In the lifetimes of both Mrs. Potter and her son, no other spring would ever be as bright and bold as that one had been. All proceeding springs would play out dully, regardless of the drenching rains or the sunny days. The elements would try to produce a result as supreme as the year James had been born, but they would always come up short. Every birthday James would look from a window, either from his home or his school, and see the waterlogged March landscape and wish that he had been born in the summer, then he would look around at the world on his birthday and be greeted by warmth. Though James had parents who loved him and friends who adored him, so despite the inhospitality of the weather James had always felt warm.

On his birthday no one would forget that the day was a day for James. He was given affection, cards, and presents. People wished him happy birthday who he'd only talked to but once in a while. No one else but James had his or her birthday on this day. Even if they had been born in the same twenty-four hour period he had been it was unrecognizable the public when under the shadow of James. His presence was domineering and pervasive, much like the fragrant lilac bushes that had stood at either side of the front door of the house that James had been carried into on his second day of life, his little pink body in a little white blanket.

His early birthdays he had celebrated while still climbing the single digits were not terribly personal affairs. The house had always been filled with guests with gifts, well dressed with a glasses of punch in their hands, beaming at him with their aged faces, wishing him a "Happy Birthday!" James had enjoyed the pats and the compliments, deriving a satisfaction from them just as he did from the fudge cake and butter-cream frosted biscuits. For most of his youth was spent around those much older than him, people who would constantly admire him from every angle and tell him so. James would not have real friends to spend his birthday with until he was bit older.

Close with both his parents, but especially with his mother, he would frequently tag along with her whenever she would go, as there had been no other candidates competing to be his playmate. Frequently James would follow her into her garden, which she kept tastefully manicured yet not too segregated. Each plant was always placed in the earth only after thoughtful consideration. James would watch his mother with a proud and fascinated eye as she worked among the flora, her hands in the soil. After he'd grown older, no longer trotting about on the ground, but gliding through the air on his broom, he'd not forget to look down at her from his perch and marvel at her ability to orchestrate such a paradise.

Sometimes he would be pulled into more than watching and his mother would had him a spade and tell him where to dig. Because of his James had soon discovered he hated gardening. His holes were never deep enough and his plants always stuck lopsided out of the ground. He would complain that he couldn't do it and his mother would say, "Oh but James you can, you just mustn't be so impatient."

"But I'm not!" James would insist while burying an unsuspecting beetle in a hole meant for a gladiolus. "The flower is the one not being good!"

Because for the life of him James hadn't been able to garden, constantly finding himself at odds with the daises and the daffodils, his admiration for his mother's art had only grown. Also growing had been the garden, expanding in small increments every year. Its beauty never failed, age only brought it more splendors. James would pretend he wasn't sensitive to this but it was pure posture.

On the eve of his eleventh birthday, the last one he would spend at home (for come fall he would begin his school career) James discovered one the secrets of his mother's garden. He had seen her in the dusky damp twilight kneeling between ivied arbors. She'd had her wand in her hand, which she'd gracefully flick sending glittering yellow sparkles onto the area below.

"What are you doing out so late mum?" James had asked. "The sun's almost down."

"Only a last minute planting I'd almost forgot."

Her voice had sounded fragile in the night air, like quivering ice. James had wondered if perhaps old Ms. Bagshot down the road had died or if he'd missed another such event that would so trouble his mother.

"All right mum?" He'd walked closer but not too close, afraid that some small frightening detail would appear.

"I'm fine dear. Are you looking forward to your birthday party tomorrow?"

"Yep, I'll finally be eleven! That means I'll get my Hogwarts letter, right?"

"Not until the summer dear."

"Yeah. Too bad."

A silence had embarked upon them, signaling a feeling of uneasiness for James. He and his parents were rarely quiet towards one another. James had always been eager to entertain them and they always to praise his efforts.

"What flower's that?" James had said to fight the disquiet.

"They're pansies." His mother had answered, settling one into its bed. "You know James, every year around your birthday I plant a patch of flowers for you. It started when I first brought you home from the hospital. People sent flowers, cards of congratulations. Every plant I was given that week I planted in this garden. Most of them are still here even. And each year I add something, a flower, a shrub, during the anniversary of that week. It is a secret way I celebrate."

James listened to his mum, mystified that he hadn't already known this one thing about her.

"Will you still do it when I'm at school?"

"I imagine so, it will still be your birthday won't it?"

And this had reassured James, who at ten on the verge of eleven, did not consider his birthday ever ceasing to hold great importance. For he looked forward to getting older, collecting the years, associating himself with different numbers. James had believed in his birthdays more than he had in the alternative.

But what ten-year-old is expected to anticipate death?

Soon his eleventh birthday had come and gone and summer had boiled away spring. After what had seemed like years to him and days to his mother, James had been packed onto a train, sending him to be planted in a school that would help grow him into a man. Each summer when James would come home and leave again bits of his boyishness would wilt and fall off and age would emerge.

While time forgives the young it shows cruelty to the old, and Mr. and Mrs. Potter, who'd had James after most would've already long given up on children, grew weak and fragile as their son grew strong. By James' 19th birthday his father was gone, taken by an illness that was not sorry for the empty chair at James' birthday dinner. It had been a somber meal but James had still known he was being celebrated. His best friends from school had all been there, and so had the girl who in a few months time would be his wife. His mother had lit the birthday candles and everybody had told him that he was loved.

After his mother had died he was still not afraid of being unloved or of loosing his importance. In bed he was never alone. His wife had always been there, picking up where his mother left off, stroking his hair and whispering to soothe his anxious mind, "Everything will be all right angel, you'll see at your birthday next year."

Though this hadn't become true because birthdays aren't guaranteed as the James of ten had believed them to be. Birthdays aren't celebrated because they are written in stone.

The year after James Potter was killed spring came late. Rain and hail beat against his headstone and ice-cold water seeped into his coffin. The sky remained pearl grey and flowers were unwilling to bloom. Sadness overcame many; eyes did not remain dry for long.

"'That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

'Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?"

--T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land