"Your clothes in the dryer. Your hair on the shower wall. Your toothbrush is too much. Your shoes empty in the hall."
James felt the absence before he saw it. He wondered how long he could keep everything resembling something normal. He wondered if he was the cheese that rots in the mousetrap. Regulus was everywhere, haunting him, taunting him. Regulus had belongings scattered all over his room; books on the bedside table, a quill on the desk since he disapproved of the glide of a biro, a grey blanket cast carelessly over the window seat. He remembered them wrapped up in it, Regulus telling him that their brains were 75% water and even then, that water was already on its way to become something else. The rain. The snow. The condensation on his window. James doesn't know how much water they shared. He hoped he'd feel him in the rain or the snow or in the condensation and know. You borrowed this water from him, ergo he is still here.
"The books on your shelf that you never read. The hunting knife you kept by your bed. The flowers you dried and tied up with twine, suspended from the ceiling."
Regulus knew that you couldn't be in two places at once. He couldn't love him and keep him. He couldn't succeed and lose everything. He didn't mean to not say goodbye, but omission is wishful thinking. James' face was undeniably hopeful when they parted for his final summer break. He couldn't say he was scared of the future or the person he had become. Regulus knew that just because something is left unsaid, it doesn't lose its meaning. A bag packed with hidden intention is still deceitful. A goodbye kiss is a goodbye kiss, even when only one pair of lips knows. Regulus could not live the life he desired and the one he was destined for. Regulus was named after the stars and so he trusted that his future had been written in them for as long as the cosmos existed. Yet he was selfish, quill to parchment, master to servant. It was unfair of him to make the request to Kreacher, to deliver the letter in a moment of quiet. It was unfair of him to give the directions ‘To James Potter, on his kitchen table, at dawn of the chosen day.’
"You tell me you love me, like it'll be the last time. Like you're playing out, the end of a storyline. I say I love you too, because it's true. What else am I supposed to do?"
It was the tail end of summer in 1980 when the letter came. Settled on the edge of the dining table in Godric's Hollow, as if knowing James was always the first awake, it sat addressed to him. He would know that handwriting on his deathbed, it stayed sat in his lowest desk drawer. The envelope was crisp with time, the ink faded from black to grey. The parchment had fared no better. Yellowed and splattered with faint water marks. He saw the words on the page and yet, not a single one made sense. James thinks of Harry, still flushed red with the newfound world, and Lily, who shone brighter than sun, who guided him home. James had made a life he couldn’t give back. He’d committed to woman, son and war. He thinks of all he lost to get here and why it came back. It feels like flying along the coast. Sea as far as the eye can see. Then abruptly, land.
"Begin, be done. Break a vow, make a new one. Call me if you need a friend, or never talk to me again. But please stay."
To the moon,
If you are reading this, I am dead, and you have moved on. Know I did not leave without saying goodbye because I wanted to consider that I might see you just once more. There is something I must do because I believe it may save you. I’d search one hundred oceans and one hundred caves. I’d drink from the cursed cup and yet not ask for your forgiveness. ‘I used to love you’ is not a phrase I shall entertain. There is only love. Nothing else. Even this I do selfishly. I would love to go back to how we were, wrapped in grey blankets, tracing shapes in windowpanes. Know that all my goodness is owed to you, my life is an oath in ode to you.
Please live. Please burn the letters and look ahead. Do not miss the lilies bloom.
R.A.B