vignettes

It’s often said there are five stages of grief. This assertion implies that at some point, there’s an end. A certain finality to be reached after an indeterminable amount of time.

To James, grief is a constant.

If there are stages, then he’s still in the first—denial. Or maybe today it’s anger. Tomorrow it might be acceptance, and he’ll get out of bed and make breakfast to feel normal. Or at the very least, less of a shell.

Except the next day will be denial, and then it will be bargaining, and then it will be such violent rage he destroys every piece of furniture in his bedroom. When he’s finished, sat in the wreckage, he’ll wave his wand to watch pieces of wood and glass and porcelain fit back together.

He’ll envy them for the ease with which they’re whole again, even after they’ve been destroyed.

Then he’ll crawl into his bed—too large for one person—and dream of gray skies, storm clouds just before the rain. When he wakes the next morning, it’ll be acceptance. He’ll stretch, feel the sun on his face. His eggs won’t burn in the pan and his toast won’t taste of ash.

He might even Apparate to Remus and Sirius’ flat, careful to avoid their eyes lest they see today is an acceptance day, but tomorrow will probably be depression. He knows why, even if he can’t voice it.

It’s hard to look at you sometimes, he wants to tell Sirius. You look so much like him and nothing alike all at once. It’s as though I’m looking at an echo that’s taken the wrong shape.

James doesn’t say it, of course. Only thinks it and doesn’t let himself linger on Sirius for too long.

To Remus, he wants to demand, How does it feel to have what I can’t? What I never will?

He doesn’t say this either. Even to him, the words taste bitter. They’re not things he wants to say to his best friend, who through no fault of his own gets to be happy when James does not.

You should try dating again, Mary tells him one day. It might help.

James, who is so desperate for relief, agrees. He finds himself on a date with a girl, a boy, another girl. It starts easy, but ends the same each time: he finds pieces, little shards, of him in each of them. Sharp eyes or the twist of lips in a sardonic grin. Black curls or a lithe frame.

James thinks he could find pieces of him in anyone if he looks long and hard enough.

He tells Mary after the fourth date gone wrong: No more. It’s not working out, and I feel bad every time I have to tell them no.

Mary frowns, but she doesn’t push.

Tonight is a strange night. His grief didn’t have a shape today—it straddled the line between depression and rage, acceptance and denial. He stands in the middle of his front yard, stares up at the cosmos stretched out above him, and talks to the stars.

In the too big living room of his too big house on his too big property, a gramophone plays a record. Spins and spins and spins it until for three minutes and seventeen seconds, James’ whole world feels a little brighter, a little better.

He tilts his face to the sky and closes his eyes.

The first notes take him back to the boathouse late at night, his hand on the deck and his pinky looped with another’s. Soft skin and softer lips; the starting bloom of something soft and tender each time their mouths did more than simply speak.

“The war is getting worse. I don’t know how much longer Hogwarts will be safe,” he’d said against James’ lips on this particular night. Such sadness in his eyes, but Merlin, did he wear it beautifully.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep you safe, whether it’s here or somewhere else. Okay?”

“Lofty promises.”

James had kissed him, again and again. In between them, he managed to say, “I mean it, love. I promise.”

I promise I promise I promise.

James opens his eyes and gazes up at the night sky overhead. It’s the wrong time of year; he can’t see the star he searches for. Despite this, he still searches. Searches until his neck aches from the angle and his cheeks have dried.

The gramophone isn’t playing their song anymore.

It isn’t playing at all.

Today, his grief has no shape. Tomorrow, it will decide before he wakes. When he opens his eyes, it will sit with him the way it always does. It will tell him your shirt is backwards and do you remember when we danced under the moonlight and you forgot to brush your teeth this morning and I love you.

His grief is a constant, and it’s all he has left.