Most mornings, James awoke with an overwhelming emptiness in his chest, a void that he could not fill no matter how hard he tried. He lived his days, wearing a mask of false contentment, even though deep down, he knew something vital was missing from his life. The frustration gnawed at him, the uncertainty of not knowing exactly what he yearned for, intensifying his inner turmoil.
It had to be something of immense significance, he reasoned, for he had carried this ache within him for countless long months. He couldn't shake the feeling that a piece of him had been lost, a fragment that he couldn't quite locate or understand. In the midst of a war-torn world, James acknowledged that he was fortunate, but the guilt of feeling incomplete when others suffered more only added to his despair. Perhaps it was simply weariness, he pondered, exhaustion seeping into his bones and clouding his mind.
But as night descended, the dreams came to haunt him, merciless in their tender torment. He found himself immersed in visions of gentle caresses and delicate hands, whispers of words that remained tantalizingly unintelligible. During fleeting moments in his waking hours, fragments of his time at Hogwarts would flash before his eyes—a glimpse of the astronomy tower, where he gazed at constellations while intertwined with someone's hand, or the empty corridors where he wandered aimlessly, accompanied by a phantom presence. Sometimes, he soared through the skies on the Quidditch pitch, the wind carrying him alongside an unseen companion.
These visions troubled James deeply, for they felt like memories not his own, as if someone had implanted a life that didn't belong to him within his mind. It felt wrong, invasive, to delve into the recollections of another person. The astronomy tower held no personal significance to him beyond his classes, and stargazing had never been his passion. Yet, the mere thought of them evoked a profound longing, a sense of yearning that felt foreign and displaced within his own being.
But it was on a fateful day, when Sirius arrived with a haunted expression and a newspaper clutched tightly in his trembling hands, that James finally began to unravel the truth. The headline on the Prophet bore the heart-wrenching words: "Regulus Acturus Black, Heir to the Noble and Ancestral House of Black, Dies..."
James couldn't bring himself to read further. The pain surged through him, not for Regulus, a person he had never properly met, but for the devastating grief etched across Sirius's face. His best friend teetered on the precipice of breaking apart, and James's heart shattered alongside him.
That night, after an arduous and soul-wearying day, sleep enveloped James readily. Yet, what awaited him were not mere dreams; they were vivid, merciless torrents of memories crashing against the fragile shores of his mind. The intensity jolted him awake, a searing headache pounding at his temples. And in that moment, the hands he had longed for, the distant laughter he had heard, and the moments spent under the stars in the astronomy tower, suddenly held purpose and clarity. They were no longer fragments of randomness but pieces of a shared existence.
Now, they possessed a face, a name, and a story.
Overwhelmed, James found himself consumed by uncontrollable sobs, their origin elusive, as Lily stirred beside him, awakened by his silent anguish. In that raw, vulnerable moment, he yearned to erase the meaning behind those hazy memories, to unburden himself from the weight they carried.
His world spun in disarray. Nothing made sense anymore. How does it even happen?
Everything felt twisted and distorted, as if fate had played a cruel game.
How could James bear the weight of his existence, knowing that he had truly know properly Regulus Black, only to lose him forever?