Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
This is an AU: James' sacrifice was enough, and Lily lived.
Everything
"James," she said. She was crying again, and she was thinking about the beginning, because that was what it felt like, she felt like she was traveling back in time and seeing it all again, all of it. "Potter," she said. And she was thinking of the first time she called him James, and it was a mistake, she didn't even think about it, and there was nothing to say after that but call him James again and again and again and again.
She just wanted to sleep for the rest of eternity.
"Why did you have to go?" she asked, and he was so far away. She couldn't reach him, she would never again, would never be able to touch him ever again, he was dead, he was dead – how could he possibly be dead? She loved him, she loved him so much, and he was gone. He died, he was dead, he was leaving her behind with nothing but pain and an urge to understand, but she doesn't understand, and she loved James – she loved James, and there was no longer a James to love.
"Where did you go?" she asked, and she felt her knees wobble, and she gave in. She fell on the ground, and it must have rained because it was muddy and it got over everything and it felt perfect. Unclear, wet, messy, cool.
Her life stopped now, it was on hold until she could hold herself together again. She was picturing him by her side, and he was holding her, comforting her for his own passing.
"I love you," he said.
"LIAR!" she screams. "You're such a fucking liar! Because if you loved me, if you truly, truly loved me and Harry, you wouldn't have left! You wouldn't have disappeared, you couldn't have, not if you fucking loved me!"
She was staring at a ring. It was hers, but she felt ill just looking at it.
"Why did you lie to me, James?" she whispered, and her voice shattered. "Why did you promise to stay forever, why DID YOU GIVE ME THIS RING – " She couldn't finish her sentence. Suddenly she was so angry, she tried to pull it off. It had to come off, because she couldn't bear wearing an empty promise on her hand anymore, and she just wanted to throw it as far away as possible. She had to get rid of it, she had to make it go away, and it was all she could do not to throw up looking at it, at that white-gold ring that he had given her on that fateful day when everything had gone wrong but so, so right and when he had said he loved her, and had promised till death do us part.
The ring was stuck.
It was stuck on her hand, and it wouldn't fall or detach or leave her bloody finger. And suddenly she wasn't angry anymore, she was sad again, she was so unimaginably sad.
Till death do us part.
She laughed, despite the sadness that was creeping in on her, that was living in her veins in her blood in her eyes in her ears in her hair in her nose and in her hands, because that's where James used to live, he used to live in every part of her and now the sadness was replacing it, and she was laughing because death took them apart so much sooner than anyone else would have expected, but they were grateful for their time together, for every minute, because he loved her and she loved him and they were fighting a war that was doomed to end like this.
With death.
It was supposed to be me, though, she thought. I'm the Mudblood. I'm persecuted and hated. He's – he was James Potter.
"It wasn't enough to protect me from my choices," he whispered.
"It should have been," she said.
And then she stood, and she turned around on that bloody white marble piece of shit that said, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death", and she walked over to her son, their wonderful son that would not remember the way he laughed, and the way he used to help him get on his tiny little broom, and his hazel eyes that were so kind and so true and so James. He wouldn't remember it, he wouldn't remember a thing, he would just live on and he would never understand how much the world lost that night when he died, he wouldn't know it didn't only lose James, but also Sirius and Peter, and now Remus was gone and who knew where he went and everything was so fucked up, so fucking bloody fucked up, and everything was such a mess, and he would never know what it would be like growing up with James as a father.
And neither would she.
The looming figure of James disappeared as she reached him, her son – their son – Harry, the person who looked so much like him, so, so much like his father, and as he grew up he was sure to be such a wonderful human being, just like his father.
She would love him, and she would cherish him, and she would be the best that she could, because he was all that was left from James, he was everything.
He was everything now.