3am. Lily is downstairs craving ice cream and tomato sauce. Again. He hopes their kid doesn’t like tomato sauce and ice cream. The smell is too strange. But he goes downstairs anyway. She’s sitting near the kitchen sink, on the countertop, swinging her legs like she isn’t 7 months pregnant. Like the world isn’t crumbling around them. And he’s completely in love with her. Sauce is on her nose, and he wipes it off with his thumb before Eskimo kissing her. She smiles at him, softly, tiredly, messy ginger hair falling into her face in the 3am light. She mumbles some words he doesn’t understand, but they both know he doesn’t need to. It doesn’t really matter.
3am. She wakes up and can hear Sirius downstairs. The empty space next to her tells her that’s where James is too. Choked sobs erupt and she’s gripped with fear. James and Sirius are tangled in an embrace when she reaches them. Sirius is having nightmares again. It sounds so childish, but they are 20 and they’ve seen so much. She doesn’t think they know she’s there, but Sirius sticks a shaky arm out from beneath James, silently asking her to join them. She does, and lily and her bulging belly are pulled into a mess of loving limbs. None of them can make sense of the war raging around them, none of them understand what the fuck the point of it all is. But maybe it doesn’t matter. They are all together right now.
3am. Her screams fill the house. It’s stomach-churning and gut-wrenching, and he thinks he’d rather face Voldemort again than have lily be in this much pain. But through her tears, she gives him that look, a small smile, and she tells him their child is coming. The light is coming, and he’ll have a smile just like hers. That smile stains James’ mind as he picks her up and apparats her to Marlene’s.
Baby harry James is born at 4:02 and the first thing he sees is his dad, crooked grin and all. “Hey, mate” is all James can say. He’s holding a tiny planet. A wonder. Something small and beautiful that he helped make. His smile is just like Lily’s and it makes his heart burst. Remus, Sirius, peter, and lily are all there. Before he knows it, lily has giggled at harry, Sirius has cooed at him, Remus has smiled at him and peter has pulled faces at him. And maybe right now, the war doesn’t matter.
3am. His turn to answer Harry’s cries. Although, harry is quite a quiet child. His mum said that James was a screamer as a baby. He’s grateful, so grateful that harry is more like lily. Just as he has rocked harry back to sleep, lily wanders in, bleary eyed from sleep, and messily kisses his cheek, looking at harry lovingly. They’re all together. All here. Despite the war.
3am. Leaving in the middle of the night to go into hiding. The prophecy isn’t about harry, it can’t be, her son, her beautiful son. He doesn’t deserve this. She and James are trying so hard to give him a happy childhood, but trying to do that and keep him safe isn’t so easy. Dumbledore took the invisibility cloak off James and Sirius isn’t allowed to know where they are. It all feels so heavy. But then harry smiles at her, and James does a terrible impression of darth Vader while cooking and she remembers why it’s all worth it.
3am. James is awake again. He’s been having nightmares about stuff he can’t stay out loud. So he sits with harry while he sleeps, eyes bleary, thinking about how harry and lily and how they would never deserve this. He thinks about how the three of them sat in Harry’s room all night not long ago. Marlene McKinnon was dead. James has known her since they were 4. He knew her. She was lily’s best friend. She played quidditch and wrestled Sirius and Pete always let her steal the cookies. He could count each freckle on her knuckles. She could remember every word to hey Jude and she learnt it purely because she knew lily loved it. And she’s gone. It’s an earth-shatteringly terrible thing, and James has broken mirrors, making his knuckles crack and bleed trying to understand. Lily has been pacing instead of sleeping. They’re both afraid of sleeping. So they hold each other and guard harry together instead. War is so tiring, but loving isn’t.
3am. He’s coming. Take harry and go. I’ll hold him off. He knows he’s going to die. But he knows he has to give harry and lily one last shot. His wand is upstairs.
Like a marionette who’s strings were cut.
She knows they can’t make it out alive. So she tells harry how much she loves him. The moment she hears james hit the floor, she knows its over. Harry is going to live. Harry is going to live.
Dropped, just like her husband.
3am. Silence.