James is laying on his back in the grass of his favorite hill. He likes to come here when the world gets a little too loud and a little too bright and starts to close in on him. He comes here when he feels happy, sad, angry, but especially when he feels like this. He comes here when he can't breathe or think or speak or even feel right, and no one else will understand him except the bugs and the flowers.
Today is just one of Those Days, he thinks (he also thinks that he might have been having these just a little bit too often lately).
It is one of those days where everything in the universe feels just a bit off, like the entire planet Earth has shifted a few degrees on its axis while James wasn't paying attention. Where he feels like his entire being is blinking and buzzing, full of sparkling stardust.
All week he was bumbling and bouncing with energy he’s kept inside for so long. He wants to jump around, wants to wiggle and wave his fingers, wants to sing along with the sparrows he can spot perched high in the trees above him. But he doesn't. He is just a little too tired today for his typical James Potter antics.
So, instead, he stares silently up into the sky, watches swallows swoop swiftly through the branches, tries to spot shapes in the soft clouds overhead.
He's been there for so long now that it is beginning to melt from that boundless blue into soft shades of salmon with patches of purple. The colors from way up above meld and mix and drip drop down like paint on a canvas until the air all around James is filled with terrific technicolor that tinges the edges of his vision, and when he takes a deep breath of it in he can taste them. James thinks to himself what a wonderful painting this would make, and reminds himself to describe it to Remus later.
His eye catches sight of the first star of the night. Every night since James was small, he's spotted that star, watched as it winks and blinks and waves down to him. He remembers sitting in the window seat with his mother with a cup of cocoa, listening to her tell him all about how it's magic, and whatever you wish on that one star will always come true; and later remembers sitting in that same seat, spilling all his secrets to his star.
Now, of course, he knows how impossible the stories are, but sometimes it's nice to imagine that he's still that young boy bundled in a blanket on his mother's lap, wishing on magic stars.
As more begin to show up, James begins to piece together constellations like a planetary puzzle. As the points of Cassiopeia fade into view, he remembers Remus pointing it out to him.
Somewhere while his brain is thinking of the stars and Remus all at once, a wire gets crossed and he decides that Remus is a whole lot like a star.
He thinks about Remus, always gleaming and glimmering, thinks of his spattering of scattered starry freckles, thinks of secrets sighed, enshrouded in the dark of a bedroom late at night.
He loves thinking of Remus. Bets he could do it all day.
James thinks of Sirius, too. He thinks he might be the moon; the striking, shining, showstopping moon, lighting up the night.
Which leaves himself and the sun, figures that it could work well enough. He likes the idea of the sun and moon working together to create moonlight, and of the sun and stars being relative to each other.
But if he really thinks about it, he is the sun. Burning and blistering, never really truly going anywhere. If he doesn't stay perfectly in line he will cause chaos. Sometimes his head is so full that if he makes one wrong move everything explodes. James knows that the sun is constantly flaring, but it's usually not visible to people. He thinks about this part a lot.
The breeze picks up, wrapping itself round and round James, and he shivers slightly. It pushes between the flowers around him, and their picturesque petals tickle his cheeks. His fingers tap tap tap against his thumbs where they rest at his sides, the sensation keeping him from following after his mind, flying and floating away all the way up into outer space himself.
Sitting up, he runs a hand over the flowers surrounding him- not quite touching, just flittering and fluttering his fingers atop them. If Lily were here, she would pluck the pretty flowers up and out of the ground and twist and tie the stems until she made a crown out of them to place right on the tip top of James' head.
He often wonders what she would think of his special secret spot; what all of them would think, really. Sometimes he considers bringing them up here, but he thinks that some things maybe should stay secret.
The sky is becoming a veil of velvety violet, and James unwillingly realizes that it might be time to head home. He looks up one last time, taking in the constellations, watching the stars dancing and twisting and twinkling together in the night sky. He thinks about how big everything really is, and how small he really is, and like always the thought scares him a little bit (he finds that oftentimes he is exceptionally good at finding things to freak himself out over).
Once Remus caught him thinking too hard, and he must just know him too well because he asks What's going on in that big head of yours? in such a way that James couldn't even try to lie to him if he wanted, and he doesn't want, anyways.
Now James tries to find comfort in his words, because even though he may feel like an ant, like a little bitty bug in the grand scheme of everything, when he looks up into the sky, the stars don’t look any bigger to you, do they? And yet, they are still right there, shining and shimmering away, and he still admires their beauty, right?
James knows a lot about the sun. Knows he likes when it comes back from hiding behind clouds, and he likes when it makes rainbows after thunderstorms. He also knows the sun is a star, so he thinks about being the sun for a bit, and finds he doesn't hate the idea.