Chapter 2
Pain. Even after four years, the first feeling he gets when he thinks about Lily is pain. It isn’t an all-consuming pain anymore, but it is an ache inside him that will probably never go away. It feels like there is a whole missing in his heart and no matter what he uses to try and fix that whole, nothing works. And not like he is trying to forget his late wife, but living like this just isn’t right. Her life should be celebrated instead of something James cries about every night when he goes to sleep.
Shortly after James and Lily started dating, Lily was diagnosed with breast cancer. Of course, this didn’t change their relationship but when Lily got pregnant a year later it made things a little more difficult.
James had told Lily that he would rather have a healthy girlfriend than a very ill girlfriend and a child, but Lily eventually convinced James by telling him that this might be the only child that she would be able to have naturally. But because Lily kept her baby, her health declined very fast.
The pregnancy was very hard and because James knew that they didn´t have as long as he wanted he proposed to Lily. At first, Lily said no because she wanted to marry James when she was free of cancer but after a while, she noticed that she was rapidly declining and she asked James to ask her again. This time she said yes.
The wedding was very small because both Lily´s and James´ parents had already past away and Lily´s sister, Petunia didn´t bother showing up. The groomsmen were Remus, Sirius and Peter and the bridesmaids were Marlene, Dorcas and Mary. Professor McGonagall, the head of the house Lily and James were in at Hogwarts, married them and now Lily Evans was Lily Potter-Evans.
They partied till deep in the night, but around 03:15 Lily’s water broke. She was only 8 months pregnant so she and James rushed to the hospital. The birth was very rough, but Harry came out healthy even though he was a month too young.
“Harry James Potter”, Lily said, “lovely to finally meet you.”
James asked a nurse to take a photo of their happy family and after that Harry was taken to the newborn department. Unbeknownst to James, this was the first and last photo that he would have of the three of them. James and Lily were told that Harry had to stay there for a week to make sure that he was healthy.
Lily also had to stay in the hospital to catch up with her chemo treatment, she couldn’t do any treatment for her breast cancer while she was pregnant so she had a lot to catch up with.
When James went home to get both Lily and Harry some things, the unthinkable happened. The result of Lily her PET scan and CT scan had come back, and the cancer spread completely through her brain. And because she couldn’t have any scans during her pregnancy it had now become untreatable.
When James ended the call, he called his best friends and told them that they could come to see Harry but also that they had to say goodbye to Lily.
It was the most heartbreaking call of James´ life.
James collected some things for Harry and on his way to the hospital he bought Lily’s favourite dinner, Indian food.
When he arrived he went straight to the infant department to collect Harry. He explained the situation to the nurses on duty and they let him take Harry straight away.
As he was walking through the hospital, he slowly started meeting his friend. First Remus and Sirius, they were on their way to the infant department to meet Harry before going to Lily and they brought some balloons for Harry and sweets for Lily. Then Peter, who had made a bouquet of different sorts of Lilly’s and other flowers at his flower shop. After that he saw Mary, she brought Lily’s favourite cookies that Mary’s mother always used to make when they were still in school. Lastly, they met Dorcas and Marlene, who had convinced the rest to do matching tattoos while they were calling each other, so they had brought some tattoo equipment from their tattoo shop.
The seven of them walked to Lily her room together. When they got there, Lily was reading one of her favourite books, ‘The Viscount Who Loved Me,' by Julia Quinn. James knew that out of all the Birgerton books, this was her absolute favourite.
She looked up from her book and smiled at her best friends. One by one they said goodbye to her and when everybody but James had said what they wanted to say, everybody was crying. Dorcas and Marlene told Lily their tattoo idea, and Lily loved it.
So after an hour, all eight of them had the tattoo: a Lily. They all had it on different places on their bodies but the tattoo was the same on everyone.
Then everybody but James left. He showed her that he brought her favourite food so they could have a family dinner.
They laid Harry on the bed next to Lily and James sat next to her. For a couple of hours, they laughed and cried and talked about their life together.
When they were done with dinner, Lily asked one of the nurses to take Harry back to the infant department.
“He doesn’t need to experience what is about to happen,” she told James. “and you don’t have to either love.”
“I know darling, but when we got married I promised to stay with you till the very end, so that is what I am going to do.”
James already felt his eyes watering and that it was getting harder to swallow but he refused to cry right now. He didn’t want the last thing Lily saw of him was him crying.
Then the doctor walked into the room and explained what he was going to do. Because Lily and James had already discussed what would happen if the cancer became untreatable, they already knew what the doctor told them.
The doctor gave Lily the medication that would help her pass away in her sleep and gave them privacy.
James laid next to Lily and embraced her.
“I love you till the day I join you and after that Lily Potter-Evans”
“I will love you wherever I am and I hope that I will have to wait a long time to see you again James Potter”
After that James felt Lily’s grip on his body go away and he knew.
The first year after Lily passed was very hard on James.
He stopped surfing completely and bearly left the house. The only reason he kept going was Harry. His friends often took care of Harry when James was too unable. The days kept slipping into each other and James lost his concept of time a little.
The second year after Lily passed was hard on James.
He started surfing again, but only recreationally, not for competitions or anything. He still relied on his friend a lot when it came to Harry but he was able to get out of the house more, still not the advised amount but he was trying.
The third year after Lily passes was still hard on James.
He started training for surfing contests again but he just didn´t seem to win, he didn´t have anyone to win a contest for. Well, Harry of course but not someone romantically.
It´s not like he didn´t try dating or anything, but it was just too hard. Looking for someone who had to compare but would never entirely be the same was just too exhausting for James. He was okay with being a single dad and besides, he had his friends for whatever he needed.
Days when he wasn´t training for a surfing match he hung out at the tattoo shop of Marlene and Dorcas, the flower shop of Peter, the bakery of Mary that she had started in the last two years to honour Lily or the atelier of Sirius and Remus, well Sirius painted and Remus wrote but they used the same space. Wherever James went, he took Harry.
Everything James did was for Harry. Picking himself up again after losing another contest, trying again and never giving up for Harry. He made sure that Harry never had to worry about anything.
“daaaaaaddd, are you coming or what?”
James quickly wipes a few stray tears from the night before away.
He looks up and sees Harry standing at the door.
“Did you get dressed all by your self honey?” he asks.
“No dad, Moony helped me pick my clothes, he and Padfoot arrived some time ago and made us breakfast. We even left you some!” Harry says with a big smile on his face.
“You look great Haz, I will be down in a second,” James says while getting out of bed.
James gets down after a few minutes and sees that Remus and Sirius are drinking their morning coffee and the kitchen table.
“Morning sleeping beauty”
“Shut the fuck up Sirius,” James says while trying to look as angry as he can at Sirius.
“What does fuck mean?” Harry has all of a sudden walked into the kitchen, grabbing his snacks and lunch for school.
“Well, when two people love each other very much-”
“Don’t even start Sirius,” James says quickly.
“This one is really your own fault mate,” Remus says while sipping his coffee.
“Yeah no shit sherlock”
“What does shi-”
“Okay Harry time to go to school,” Sirius stands up and lifts Harry and takes him to his car.
“I’ll be there in just a minute love!” Remus shouts after them.
“You really should try to cuss less around Harry mate, I must say that it is funny that you thought that Moony and I would be the ones that would cuss the most around Harry.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking with that. Anyways, have you seen the waves on the way here? I checked online and because of the storm the waves are massive, I just HAVE to go surfing this afternoon.”
“Are you sure? You haven’t surfed during a storm in ages and it can be quite dangerous if you don’t pay enough attention.”
“Oh I can totally surf these monster waves Moony it will be fine. Besides, when will I have the opportunity to practise surfing massive waves again?”
To that question, Remus didn’t have an answer.
“Just be careful okay? Harry wouldn’t like being an orphan”
“Yeah, yeah I’ll be careful. I always am”
I really should be more careful, James thinks as he almost gets thrown off of his surfboard.
He really underestimated the storm that is passing over, he knew that the waves would be big but he didn’t even hope that they would be this massive.
Real monster waves.
James starts pedalling towards the beach, “one last wave and then I’ll go home,” he thinks.
He looks behind him to see where the wave is but it is right behind him, James quickly stands up but when he does he gets thrown from his board. He tries to protect his head but before he can do that his head hits something hard and everything goes dark.
When he wakes up there is a bright white light shining at him.
“Lily?”
“No Mr Potter, my name is madame Pomfrey. You are at St Mungo's hospital.” The nurse called madame Pomfrey says.
“How did I get here madame?”
“You had an accident while surfing and you hit a rock with your head, you have a very bad concussion, you fractured your left leg and you broke your left wrist.”
“Can my son come and see me, madame?”
“Sorry sir, visiting hours are almost over and the other patient in the room is getting a guest very soon, your son can come tomorrow if you want. Does he have anybody to stay with?”
“Yeah he does, he can stay with his uncles: Sirius Black and Remus Lupin. Do they know that I’m here?”
“We spoke with them when we called your emergency contact sir, I will be checking up on you every couple of hours because of your concussion, but try to get some sleep now.”
“Okay thank you, madame, I will try”
James got comfortable in the bed and closed his eyes. Madame Pomfrey closed the curtains around him so now it should be dark enough for him to sleep.
Just as he was starting to drift away he heard to door open.
“Thank you for showing me the way miss, I won’t be long,” A man says to madame Pomfrey who opened the door for him. “I’m serious Mr Crouch-”. The nurse says. The rest of what she said wasn’t understandable to James. “Yeah, yeah, I understand I’ll be very quick.” A couple of seconds later James heard the door close.
“How are you baby?” This Mr Crouch asked the other patient who James assumed to be his partner. “I’m fine, my head hurt like a bitch but besides that, I’m doing pretty okay”.
“Well that’s great baby”, James hears Mr Crouch say, “I know you understand that when you’re done with your scan tomorrow that you will have to start training to be better okay? You can’t fail us like this again, this was supposed to be our big breakthrough but I guess that we can wait for a little for that. At least there will be a lot of attention to our ballet now right?!”
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
James didn’t know anything about the situation that these men were in but it couldn’t be a healthy one. How could you expect your partner to bounce right back after he got sent to the hospital? James didn’t know who the other man was but he certainly didn’t deserve Mr Crouch.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right” James hears the other man say. He has to be under some sort of hypnotism right?! James thinks. No way that that was what the other man actually thought.
Mr Crouch says something to the other man and a few seconds later the door closes.
James really can’t imagine that anyone would talk to a loved one like that.
That couldn’t be love.