How Do You Live with the Ghosts of Before?
How Do You Live with the Ghosts of Before?
“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
JAMES
James sometimes forgets what it was like to live in the time before.
Before the end, before the planes fell from the sky like leaves in autumn, before skyscrapers collapsed after years of neglect, before the lights stopped flickering, before the water stopped running, before the buildings fused with the trees, before there was nothing but ruin. Before the world came to a screeching halt and ‘ THE END IS HERE’ was spraypainted blood red onto every brick wall in the city.
Sometimes, his memories of mundane school days feel fantastical, a fiction he made in his head in order to survive his new life. He sometimes hears the sound of that old ticking clock, the same crusty one that sat in his dreaded Maths classroom, always caked in the evening sun, watching it countdown his days.
He used to hate that clock.
Now he would give anything to go back to the calm.
Anything to go back to rainy winter evenings sat in front of his fireplace, listening to his parents hum the same old tune that drove him mad.
But that is before.
And this is now.
Now is trekking the old motorways, littered with abandoned cars that hold the last breaths of people trying to escape the virus clawing at their throats. Now are weeds sprouting from the concrete, finally defeating humanity’s persistence, covering the white lines. Now is bathing in lakes in the middle of nowhere, hiding in woods and sleeping under the stars with strangers found in the wreckage. Now is mourning people who just disappeared in the chaos, never to come back.
Now is James Potter sitting by the creek, sharpening his knife, watching Lily Evans and Peter Pettigrew splash about, basking in the last warm evening of summer. A knife which he hates to own, but needs to live. A knife stained with the blood of humans turned monsters. That’s what Lily says, to give him peace of mind. But sometimes he thinks, are we too not the monsters? Just the kind that win, and can tell themselves otherwise?
Whenever he says this to Lily, she hugs him so tight he can’t hear his thoughts.
Lily and Peter are not from before.
But they make the now easier.
“We ‘ought to get movin’ soon, can’t stay in one place too long,” Peter calls out, walking out the creek, water droplets rolling down his skin, slightly red from the sun.
James peers over at Lily, who is getting back into her clothes, her red hair curling in all sorts of places. Their stuff has been dumped and scattered around the creek for days, finding solace in such a secluded area. In places like this, the forests and woods, he can pretend they’re just camping. Everything is the same here, and they don’t have to look at crumbling homes and forgotten towns.
But Peter is right. It's unsafe to stay in one place for too long.
He had found Peter first when the chaos was still fresh and dangerous. James was on his own, a little mad, a little depressed, and very hungry. The looting had started, and it was a scary place to be. James avoided it at all costs. People were dying, whether that be from the virus that wiped out their world with a mere click of its fingers, or the violence that humans eventually fall into.
James was smart, he stayed couped up in his desolate school classroom, that Maths classroom, where he snacked on school lunches left in bags that grew rotten over time. Outside the windows, he heard the screams, the crashes, the explosions. He watched as the flashing siren lights slowly stopped, the law breaking within the first few days.
He wasn’t sure where everyone else went. No one came back to school. James had never grown so attached to it.
Eventually, the bread grew mouldy, and there was nothing left to eat. James knew he had to go.
Armed with sharp cooking knives from the canteen, seventeen-year-old James didn’t know what waited for him out there. A world turned to destruction, a world which smelt of death, which had turned its back on all the steps they made, and ran itself into the ground when there was finally something they couldn’t overcome.
James had been scared to see another person again. But then he found Peter.
They both reached for the last packet of crisps left in the little corner shop, two sets of terrified eyes staring at one another, wondering if the last thing they ever do was fight for a packet of Ready Salted Walkers Crisps.
“I’m not going to kill you over crisps,” is what Peter said, to which James laughed, for the first time since it all happened.
They sat on the corner shop floor, sharing the bag, and have been together ever since. They were there for one another when they wandered back to their homes, only to find blood and corpses. Peter was there when James sobbed in his old garden, his house looted and no longer his own, and James was there for Peter when he threw up in his childhood bedroom after seeing his family dead.
They were there for one another when all they had to cling to was ghosts.
For a while, it was just them. He shivered to think about what they did to continue. To match the anger of the world falling down around them.
Then, they found Lily Evans.
Lily, with mud in her hair and blood on her face, having had just killed two men who cornered her and threatened to take much more than her life. Lily, who punched Peter in the face and had a knife to James’ throat, because men without the law to keep their morality in check were much scarier than any virus.
Somehow, in all those scars, Lily found trust in them. They gave her food, water, and let her leave. But she stayed. She said it was just for a night. She watched them the entire time with quivering eyes, shaking hands and a respectful amount of distance. James and Peter did what they always did, telling stupid stories about before, to make the now better, and she listened the entire time.
By morning, Lily Evans had deemed them safe. And she joined them, no longer alone.
James likes them, he likes the new peace they found in survival. But he yearns for more than ghosts.
He needs to find someone.
And after much convincing, they agreed.
James Potter is going to find Sirius Black, dead or alive.
---------
It’s been seven years since he made that decision. Ten years since the end began.
And he’s never gotten close to finding Sirius.
He sees it in their eyes. The doubt. No one finds anyone from before, it’s a universal understanding bleached into their bones from the moment the first sun rose after the endless night, and people emerged from their caves to see the silence. You were lucky if you did. And he sees in the way they watch him, Lily with her sorrow and Peter with his worry. But they never tell him to stop, to give up, because what else is there to do? Wither and die? Watch the world continue to melt and hope for nothing from it.
“What’s this Sirius like anyway?” Lily asked him way back into their fifth year after she stopped avoiding that question like the plague. To know someone, it is to lose them harder.
James smiled, because he couldn’t help it, “Sirius is amazing. Super goofy and mouthy, swears like a trouper, but he’s also incredibly smart. He got into all the private schools, even without his parent's money. I thought he was going to be so stuck up when I first saw him, Mr Private School at a regular old state school. But he was amazing.”
Lily smiled, “You were best friends?”
“Until the end of time, we used to say.”
How fitting, he thinks now.
Peter and Lily must know Sirius as well as he does, with the number of times he spoke about him. He too, knew the important people in their lives, because they’ve had ten years to mourn them.
James knows of Petunia Evans. He knows she had long brown hair that reminded Lily of her favourite chocolate. He knows that her room was spotless and simple and that her dreams were to marry a nice man and have a family, even if Lily disagreed that it was all she was made for. James knows that Lily and Petunia were as different as two sisters could be, that Petunia hated Lily’s staunch feminism that labelled her as a minx, and Lily hated Petunia’s quiet agreement to a man’s word.
James knows that Petunia was scared of dying, but she was more scared of Lily dying because of her. James knows that Petunia Evans died in her room suffocated by her own coughs, the windows closed shut and the door locked, despite Lily trying to get in, if only to hug her sister one last time. She never got that door open, and she never saw her again.
Lily will pick a Petunia flower every time she sees one, and will wear it in her hair until it wilts.
“Do you have any idea where he could be? Or where he was when the virus hit?” Peter asked one night in year six when they sat around a small fire for warmth.
James rested his head on his knees. “He was at the airport. Bristol. He was going to go on Holiday with his uncle. I don’t know if the plane took off.”
“James...” Lily said.
“I know. It’s near impossible he’s still here.”
Yet no one said anything come morning.
If Peter knew that his cousin Wilbur was still alive, his best friend, he would do the same. The boy with the tattoos who smoked a little too much, but cared so much for the people around him. If Peter hadn’t seen Wilbur dead in his bed in his home, he would do the same.
James is just lucky he hasn’t seen that dead body yet.
--------------
“James, you were a jock at school, just admit it.”
“Fuck you, I was not.”
“James, you were on the football team, you had about six girlfriends, and you were head boy.”
“And? I was also in the school play.”
Lily stops at that, turning around from where she was leading them, knife out at the ready, just in case they came across anyone. Her eyes are wide. “The school play?”
“Yep,” he says, popping the p, “Romeo and Juliet.”
Peter snorts, “I did not take you as a theatre kid.”
“Theatre kid is strong; I was in one play.”
Lily levels him a stare, “Why did you star in one play? What was the pipeline?”
James hasn’t thought about that school play in a while. His fingers tingle with a memory long forgotten, a time unrecognisable, a stage full of soft pink lights, and a face he hadn’t thought of for many years, reciting Shakespeare at him. “Romeo and Juliet. I needed it for my uni application. Something to jazz it up.”
“Of course you did. Who did you play?”
“He’s giving a Mercutio vibe,” Peter laughs.
“Thanks, Pete. But no, I played Romeo.”
Lily huffs and turns back around, “God, you auditioned for one play, and got the leading part straight away? Pretty privilege does exist.”
“Aw, you think I’m pretty Evans?” James laughs, bounding up to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She shrugs him off fairly quickly.
“I would have hated you at school James.”
“What? Why?”
“Me too mate,” Peter admits.
James is thoroughly offended now, stopping them in their tracks to put his hands on his hips like a scolding mother, “Okay, this is totally unfair. Neither of you knew me in school.”
“Oh, I knew you. Popular, handsome, gets the lead in the school play despite having no interest in the drama department before that – you were every boy I despised. But I was quite the hot-headed teenager back then, so don’t take it personally.”
James did in fact, take it personally.
“You’re basing me off a stereotype!”
Peter takes a swig of his water, “Well, is she right?”
“Of course she is! But still...”
Lily finally smiles, “Calm down James. I like you now, don’t I? I wouldn’t have stuck around for eight years if not.”
“Pete?”
“James, we’ve known each other for a decade now. You’re good mate.”
Belatedly, James realises he’s known Peter twice as long as he’s known Sirius. The now has outlived the before. That feeling knocks him down, makes him want to retch and sleep off the knowledge, because he’s so far from Sirius. So far from their last hug, their last high-five.
Lily holds his shoulder, “James, are you okay?”
“Yeah...let’s keep going.”
So they keep going, they always keep going.
Night comes, and they make camp. They’ve hit a lot of greenery currently, not many roads, not many big buildings. According to the old map they found in an old antique shop, they are somewhere in the Cotswolds. Lots of fields, lots of old cottages and not a lot of shops.
Peter rummages through their bags. He frowns. “We need more supplies soon.”
The beans bubble between them, a rare find of branded Heinz, the smell of rich tomato wafting through the woods and reminding James of sleepovers at his Nans. He gives it a stir, the spoon clanking against the pot. Lily joins Peter, and they start to lay out everything they have.
Not a lot.
“Right, well. We have enough for the next few nights, but we need more. Pete, what’s the map looking like?”
He trails his finger across the old version of their land, “There is a village nearby. But we’re still in the midst of small towns. We need to be getting back to the cities, with shops and more houses.”
James dishes out the beans, “But cities are more dangerous. Remember Birmingham?”
A place he would rather forget. The gangs are prominent there. They hardly made it out alive.
Peter is still looking at the map, searching for the nearest city. “I think we should head to Gloucester, get as many supplies as we can, then avoid the bigger places and take the country paths until we hit Bristol.”
“What about the Death Eaters?”
Lily eats her beans, not looking up, “They’re in London.”
“They’re branching out.”
“Where have you heard that?”
“That group we saw last, the five girls and the dog? They were from London. They told me the Death Eaters wanted to take over all the cities.”
When humanity collapsed, many people turned to God. One last divine hope, one last prayer. But then the cathedrals fell and the churches caved in, and the believers stopped believing, and started to run instead. But many people don’t do well with having nothing to follow.
And so, Tom Riddle emerged from the ashes, a new God, a new prophet.
Tom Riddle speaks pretty words. He’s heard some of them, whispered by fellow believers who travel with them on their lips. These preachers are usually pretty harmless unless tainted with the folly of human existence. He speaks in sonnets and powerful speeches, about how they have to band together to survive, about how they only became a species after finding order, finding a system to conform to.
Tom Riddle is trying to put back together the pieces and make sure they complete him. Another wandering soul, lost, trying to find purpose in it all.
But he’s dangerous. His followers, the Death Eaters, are dangerous. Often insane and maddening, prone to torture, with no one there to arrest them or save their victims. James shivers when he thinks of them. He feels sorry for people who find comfort in blindly believing someone like that because there isn’t anything else.
“I doubt they’ll go to Gloucester.”
“We don’t know.”
“Right. Well, we’ll be careful. We need supplies, one way or another.”
And James knows they’re right. They eat the beans in silence and end the night staring up at the stars.
He wishes he was better at astrology, for if he knew how to stargaze, he be able to see Sirius every night.
“Do you think we’ll get to Bristol by winter?” Lily asks as they try to sleep.
James blinks at the night, “Maybe.”
“What if we don’t?”
Winter is always hard. The first few years, he and Peter struggled. They found many old coats and scarves, but it was no match for the harsh winds and snow. James still wonders how they made it through those months, through the hail, through the red fingers and cold noses. When they met Lily, they had more experience, less fear, and they braved entering old homes for the warmth.
James hated doing it. To be living so carelessly in someone else's past, the ghosts that must haunt the rooms. One of his least favourite memories is when they found a small house on the edge of a town, ivy climbing up the walls and weeds curling into the door. When they broke in, all he saw was a life paused.
There was old food out on the table, rotten and covered in flies, too old to know what it once was. Four plates were out, two plates bigger, two smaller. The kitchen was full of dead plants and a half-eaten dog bowl. James stepped around the rooms like it was a museum, a sofa still indented with the places the family used to sit, a kid's room filled with dusty toys and a pink duvet.
The photos on the wall were faded, but he could make out the smiles of the family that once lived there. He broke down crying, and cried the entire night. None of them could sleep anywhere but the living room, out of respect. Whoever died there, it was their home, and he would not disturb how they last left their bed.
James hates to do it but knows they have to. They have to stop seeing them as homes.
“Then we find somewhere liveable for the months, and we wait some more.”
Peter yawns, “Do you think anyone still falls in love anymore?”
Lily snorts, “A bit random Pete.”
“Sorry...I just...I wonder if anything normal still happens like that you know?”
“I think they do. We’re still human after all, even if there are fewer of us. If I wasn’t a massive lesbian, I could have fallen in love with either of you two.”
James laughs this time, “Thanks.”
“You know what I mean though. We didn’t fall in love, because that just isn't meant to be. But maybe there are others out there who did.”
“Now that’s quite a unique meet-cute.”
“Have either of you guys ever been in love?” Peter asks another question.
Lily answers first, “Nah. We were what...seventeen when this first happened? I was too young to find out what it was. Plus, I was a girl who liked girls in a public school. Recipe for disaster.”
“James? Ever been in love with all those girls you pulled?”
He thought of all his girlfriends, silly little relationships spanning from when he was thirteen to sixteen, all of them over rather dramatically, as school kids tended to do. James never felt strongly about any of them. He was obsessed and infatuated, until he wasn’t, and got bored. He was obsessed with the chase, the thrill of knowing he was wanted, until it was time to hang out with them, and there wasn’t anything to say.
“Nope.”
“Eloquent as ever. What about you Pete? Were you in love with Effie, that first girlfriend?”
“Well, I thought I loved her. She was probably the closest I ever got to it. If we had more time, then maybe. But it was school. I don’t think so.”
“Blimey, this is too deep for tonight. I think it’s time we slept.”
James tries. He shuts his eyes, but he can’t stop seeing the stars.
------------
Sirius is the only person from before James allows himself to think about, to hope about, to wonder about.
Because if you think of more people, you inevitably spiral. Losing one person is enough, but to lose everyone you ever loved is a pain too much for one person to bear. So, you don’t think about them.
Lily mourns Petunia, but he’s sure she has other people in her life she misses too.
Peter grieves Wilbur, but James knows he has a big family.
James wants to find Sirius, but he was surrounded by people he cared about.
You can only pick one, it seemed.
Because if you pick more, you shatter.
James picked Sirius.
His brain sometimes thinks about the others, of course, it’s only natural. But he stops it before it becomes too much, and he never stops to think if they’re alive.
But, even if he doesn’t allow himself to think about them, they’re there.
He reads Romeo and Juliet every night, even if he knows it inside and out by now. He knows each line, he knows each scene, it stains his lips and haunts his brain. Yet, he still reads it, to remember how it sounds on his tongue, how it sounded back then. To run his fingers over the notes in the margin, notes made by him, notes made by another. It brings him comfort.
Lily and Peter never said anything about it, not even now, when they found out he was Romeo. It’s clear what it is, a relic from the past, an artefact from before, a tether to ghosts.
He reads it now, in the dawn of a new morning, when the dew on the grass is still prominent and autumn lingers in the air. He’s at the beginning again, where Romeo talks to Benvolio.
James remembers rehearsing that scene for the first time. He really didn’t know what to expect, doing a play, a Shakespearean one at that. Benvolio had been a boy named Gilderoy Lockhart, a very eccentric theatre kid who was rather disgruntled at James’ presence, having taken the part he was going for. They were stiff and awkward during that rehearsal, with the other boy barely looking at him.
James had been annoyed at the time. Angered by the hostility, it felt like the end of the world, to be shunned so openly.
That is someone he never thinks about. Someone who was in his life briefly, then gone. Alive in a quick memory, but nothing more. He thinks of him for a few seconds, mourns, and moves on.
-------------
Lily has a gun.
She doesn’t use it often, but she has it. She found it in an old farming shed in her alone years.
When a bullet leaves that gun, it feels bigger for some reason. It sounds like death, like killing. At least a knife doesn’t make a noise.
She has to use it when they wander into an old pub in a village, looking for anything to eat.
They rummage around the kitchens, but it’s been bled dry. They wander back into the main room, and James laughs, “They’ve got a few packets of peanuts.”
Peter scrunches up his nose, “Of course, they left the peanuts. No one wants the peanuts.”
They share the peanuts between them, and they taste of forgotten youth they never quite reached. James was just short of reaching eighteen when it all happened, so never had the clubs and pubs experience. He went to silly house parties with watered-down alcohol and fruity shots, but nothing more. James looks around at the chairs still around sticky tables, glasses still stained with lip marks.
Then, there’s a creaking from behind them.
They all turn in record speed, moulded from tragedy, defining with survival.
There’s a man, older, rough around the edges, with that look in his eye. The one you know can’t be stopped, the one that will kill.
People who are alone are to fear, as they never find anyone ever again. No one left to hold onto, only themselves to blame.
He comes for them, knife sharp in his hands, running and making no effort to stop.
They don’t have time for risks.
Lily shoots him, through the heart.
He falls in a dull thump, over quickly, no longer looking mad, but defeated.
In the other life, the before, that man may have been a teacher. A farmer tending his home. A husband losing his wife. A brother. An uncle. James walks over to the man and closes his eyes, and tries not to think about what he was before.
He utters a prayer because he never knows if someone ever believed in a God, but if they did, it would bring them peace.
------------
“Pete. Peter. Pete!” James yells in glee.
Peter comes begrudgingly from his sleep, wiping his eyes and yawning. “What?”
“Look! A football!” He points excitedly to where the football rests, slightly deflated but overall, in rather good condition.
Peter blinks at it, and then back up at James. “A football.”
“A football.” He nods.
Around them, one goal remains standing, covered in rust. There isn’t a pitch anymore, only tall grass, but it’s something. Peter’s face turns blinding, and James matches his energy.
They play, like kids. It’s rare to find something untouched by the new world, to be able to move around like you were in the old one. James is out of practice, he hasn’t played since it all came apart, but his body remembered how to be free.
This is how they live now. They wander through the decimation of civilization, finding old trinkets and forgotten toys, and play with them like children on Christmas. One of their best finds was a board game in an old leisure centre, with all the pieces and everything. Even before the virus destroyed them, no one played it. They didn't have enough space in their bags for it, so they played that one night, amongst moonlight and debris, rolling dice and climbing ladders.
Lily joins them eventually. She tackles rough, sliding them into the mud and grass, grazing their knees, with no band-aids to stick over them. James laughs when she runs into Peter, who yelps and loses his balance.
They squabble like siblings, and James dribbles the forgotten ball, counting how many he can do.
Eventually, they have to get moving, and James leaves the football there for another group of wary travellers to find.
Lily and Peter take the lead, and James falls behind.
He tries to imagine them in school before all of this happened.
He knows what they were like, of course, because they said. Lily was an artist, a reader, a ballsy feminist who told boys where they could stick it. She said wore a lot of vests, and that she dismissed the school’s sexist uniform dress code, wearing only trousers and never skirts. Lily Evans was a trailblazer, many hated her for it, many secretly admired her for her courage.
While he hated to say it, they probably would have butted heads. While James never thought he did anything wrong, Lily would have for sure found that to be incorrect, and they would have fought.
Peter, was the quiet boy. A scientist, he lived in the labs and avoided the canteen, with only a few friends and never spoke up in class. He was the kid who got told on parent’s evening to ‘contribute more’ even though that never made any sense. Peter said his acne was bad and his haircut could never be right, and he got bullied often.
Three souls, who probably would have never met then.
Now, he can’t imagine a life without them.
James moves ahead, barging in between them, placing an arm around both their shoulders.
“Alright?”
“Yeah.”
----------
He dreams of Sirius.
Sometimes it’s memories. Of them meeting in Year 7, baby faced and starkly differently, or so they thought. Put together in the same form, sat next to each other, too nervous to speak first. James made the first move. He offered Sirius a gummy worm, to which the boy told him he never had one before.
That was when he learnt Sirius was rich, and severely sheltered. He went to some posh private primary school, where there were only six to a class. He fought tooth and nail to go to a public school, and there he was, in a perfectly tailored blazer and an ironed tie. James’ was loose, and his shirt was crumpled no matter how many times his mum ironed it.
Other times, it was a vision of him now. Holed up away somewhere, stranded near the airport, alone and waiting for him.
Every time it happened, he woke up in a cold sweat and his best friend’s name on his lips.
“Another dream?” Lily asks him, passing him some water.
He nods and gulps it down.
“Do you ever stop to think maybe he’s looking for you? That maybe we should stay put?”
There are ways to stay still. Some people have created communities in old towns, often a little weird and eccentric, but safer than being alone. They could find one, prove their loyalty and stay low. But then, they’re giving up. He’s giving up. Plus, safety isn’t guaranteed there. If they come, if anger and fire find you there, that’s it. Everything you’ve built up to is ash.
“Sirius never came to me. I always found him.”
“Right. Well, we’re going to head to that cottage on the hill, the last one we can see until we head to Gloucester. It looks quite isolated, might be nice to sleep indoors for a few days.”
Peter begins to stir; James can tell from the way he fidgets in his sleeping bag. “Morning Pete.”
“Mornin.”
Lily has a Petunia in her hair. James points to it, “Found another one?”
She strokes it, “They’ll be out of season soon.”
“Then we’ll have to find them all before then.”
“That seems a bit impossible James.”
“What’s he saying?” Peter says, finally sitting up and stretching.
“That we should find every single Petunia flower.”
“Seems easy enough.”
“Exactly, thanks Pete.”
“Idiots,” she mutters fondly.
They move, as they always do, finding a river on their travels to bathe in.
For them, the awkwardness of being naked and vulnerable in front of each other has faded. Lucky for them, no one is attracted to one another, so it’s never tense or weird. But sometimes James thinks about it. Not about them, but about that feeling. He was never in love with his girlfriends, but he misses the crushes. The lingering looks, the sparks of electricity when you accidentally brushed hands.
However, you can’t force love.
He loves Lily and Peter as much as one person could, and he thinks, that has to be enough.
They smile at him as they dry themselves, all wet eyelashes and flushed cheeks. He smiles back, and he means it.
Walking gets boring, but it’s all they can really do. There are no cars, no buses, no trains, no planes. James remembers the planes, falling from the sky, on fire, crashing into the ocean, into land. He remembers the flames, the carnage. Now, he comes across the skeleton of one, and it’s overgrown with wildflowers and soil. A reset.
“What’s something we don’t know about one another?” James asks to break his boredom, swatting at overhanging leaves.
Peter muses, “First kisses?”
“Yours was Fiona in Year 8, who you didn’t think liked you but she did, then moved schools the next week. Lily’s was a boy named Max, but she doesn’t count that one because she hated it, so it’s actually Sarah in Year 9. Mine was Mandy O’Connor in the music classroom. Next question.”
Lily grumbles, “Alright, alright. What universities were we all going to?”
“Peter was going to Portsmouth, Lily you were going to somewhere in London, you hadn’t decided which one, and I was going to Nottingham.”
“Christ, okay. What about that school play thing? Pete, did you ever perform in a school play?”
“God no, can you imagine me on a stage?”
“I for sure can. You would make a great Romeo.”
Peter rolls his eyes, “Sure, thanks James.”
“’Bout you Lils? Any plays?”
“Nope, too busy protesting and marching.”
“Our little liberal. That’s so cool.”
“At the time it wasn’t.”
James decides to dig a little deeper, to open that wound a little wider, to feel something a little sharper, “If you could find someone from before, someone who could be alive, who would it be?”
It breaks the unspoken rule, only one, but sometimes, you need to. Those names will forever get lost if you don’t.
There is silence for a bit. Lily speaks first, “My friend Alice.”
“My aunt.”
They don’t ask James, because they know his answer.
---------------
The cottage on the hill is rather beautiful.
It’s a house that hasn’t fallen to complete ruin in its time, the roof still intact, windows still in place, despite being overrun with weeds. The gate is shut; the door is closed. The curtains are drawn, blocking anyone from looking in. There is a certain serenity surrounding the cottage, the garden, as expected, is untended and overgrown, those old flowers growing out of control.
James thinks there was once a driveway here, but it's now just grass.
Peter creeps up first, undoing the gate which clicks open. Their weapons are held in front of them. Lily’s dagger, Peter’s kitchen knife with the floral handle, and James’ knife from the school kitchens, with him from year one.
The door is weirdly locked. Peter turns back to them confused.
“It’s locked.”
“Huh,” Lily clicks her tongue and moves Peter aside to start picking it. James looks over the windows again, trying to peek through. He wonders who used to live here.
Eventually, she unlocks it, and it creaks open. They all watch with bated breath, revealing the dark corridor inside. They step in.
It's a nice cottage. Not too messy, not looted, just left to exist. But it is empty, so whoever kept it safe until now has moved on.
They passed in silence, peering at old photos of a big family, an old lady in the middle of them all. In the kitchen, Peter and Lily open the cupboards. Tins after tins of food. All lined up neatly.
“We’ve hit the jackpot here.”
“Do you think the old lady just died?”
“How do you know an old lady lived here?”
“Logical guess from all the photos.”
“Oh. Well, I guess? This must just be a lucky find.”
“Yeah, lucky. I’m going to look around some more. Looks like there might be some good stuff.”
“Okay, be careful!”
James lets them go through the cupboards and explores more of the house. He enters the living room. Neat too. The sofa looks worn, comfy, and there are quite a few books on the coffee table. Unlit candles are scattered everywhere, the wax melting down the holder and pooling on the surface. James picks up a book and thumbs at the cover.
No dust.
No. Dust.
Frantically, he looks around and realises there isn’t any dust anywhere.
Fuck.
He moves back to the kitchen, where he notices everything is clean, no rotten food, no flies. “Guys, we should go.”
“Why?”
“There’s no dust. Someone still lives here.”
Lily and Peter freeze, dropping the tin, rolling on the ground by their feet. It echoes around them. But as they begin to run out the front door, loud footsteps come down the stairs. Idiotically, they all pause, and see the man round the corner, blocking the exit. He’s tall, and rather intimidating to look at.
“Where do you think you’re going with our food?”
He has a gun. Two guns in one house. They no longer have an advantage.
They run.
James runs towards the back door, the other two hot on his heels, barging through and into the garden. It feels like he can’t run quickly enough, there is nowhere to go, and there is no escape. James pushes, grunts and sprints. But, they don’t make it far. Two new people are grabbing hold of Lily and Peter, keeping them hostage. They yell, and James trips at the sound.
No, no, no.
Not them.
This is how it ends now. You raid the wrong place, you’re too underprepared.
Lily is being held by another girl, and James briefly catches the sight of icy blonde hair and her knife at Lily’s throat. Peter is in the same situation, struggling against the body behind him. James panics and moves to get up, but then he’s staring down the barrel of a gun.
The gun cocks.
“Please, don’t shoot! We’ll give you back your food!” Lily screams.
The other man with the gun emerges from the house, where his friends toss him their bags, “Look through their shit, see if there is anything useful.”
James, who is too busy looking at his death, doesn’t look up.
Not until-
“Did anyone follow you?”
That voice.
He knows that voice.
It’s from before.
James looks up, and everything blurs around him. Because sometimes, all he can remember is before, and yet he forgets what it was like to be in it. Everyone from before feels like a fairytale character. His maths teacher Mrs Higgins, the old woman who ran his local shop, Mandy O’Connor.
Sirius Black.
His mother. His father.
They exist only in his memories, and they never clash with him now.
But yet.
“Regulus?”
Someone he didn’t pick to find, but itched at the back of his mind. In the pages of his copy of Romeo and Juliet, in the foggy memories of his childhood, someone who never came to the front of the stage but was always there. Regulus Black haunts him even if he didn’t allow it, because he can’t pick the ghosts of his past. But he’s there.
And there has never been something more miraculous than that.
The man behind the gun startles, like he hadn’t realised who James was. It’s been ten years after all. He watches as his eyes widen in recognition before they harden once more. He doesn’t lower the gun.
“Regulus, it’s me? James Potter.”
He doesn’t move. The gun shakes.
No one finds anyone from before.
“ Come on Reg, you know me. From before.”
That seems to do something. He presses the gun closer. “There is no before.”
Then, he chucks it aside, and storms back into the house.