Dora was kissing his forehead. She was rubbing his back after a nightmare, a steaming cup of tea clutched in his hand, sitting in front of the fire in the living room, her voice soothing and soft. Singing, almost.
"Nothing can ever heart you when mummy is here, I love you so, so much..."
And a flash of Voldemort's face - jarring, painfully juxtaposed over Dora's own kind one in the memory... but only for a moment before it was Dora's face again. She was cackling maniacally, her eyes bright with a hungry expression of enjoyment... "Nothing will ever hurt you when mummy's here," she mocked in a sing-song tone as instead of a soothing brush of knuckles against his cheek, there was sharp pain that ran though his nervous system, flushed his face and wrecked his body, making James scream out in pain, tears pouring over his cheeks - not for the nightmare she was soothing him of but the nightmare he was now living... "Mummy would never hurt you, Jamesey..."
And the living room seemed to collapse upon itself, like it had been made of orgami and the paper was folding up into a new shape, the pain and laughter still filling his head...
The memory of him on her lap was a picture in his hands now, black and white and torn.
And he was on his broomstick, Derek Bell was coaching him, pointing to the corners of the pitch, the sunlight catching his blonde hair so that it shone and James was staring up at his hero, honored beyond measure to be there, learning from the boy that he thought was the best quidditch player ever. He put his arm 'round James's shoulder and he was saying something about the wind direction and the way the broom would handle at higher altitudes, how that might effect James's angles a bit when he went to turn or take a dive... It didn't matter what Derek was saying with his mouth - it was his face that James was hearing. James was going to be in the tourney because Derek Bell believed in him and Derek's face was bright, flushed from flying all morning, and his blue eyes full of enthusiasm and confidence...
And all of a sudden the handsome young man was marred by a sneering grin where the joyful one had just been.
"Doesn't matter what I believed in Potter," Derek Bell's voice said, "I'm dead. I was weak and foul and a lover of filth, a blood traitor, an enemy to wizards... I would have bowed to the Dark Lord the first time he challenged me... just like you will do now... because you, like me, are a coward."
And what had been an encouraging arm about the shoulder became electric... Pain shooting across James's shoulder blades so that his back arched and he gasped as it felt as though his spine was trying at folding in on itself.
"Oh what a brave little boy, playing quidditch for Gryffindor, wearing your precious little trainers and snitch-covered pyjamas," came Derek Bell's mocking tone, "Those certainly prove you've got what it takes to be a man, don't they, Potter? Being sorted to Gryffindor house and wearing all your precious little lion's gear... Can't possibly be a coward if you're a Gryffindor, can you, Potter?"
And the pitch folded up around him and reconfigured itself, it was the Bell Towers now and he and Sirius were sitting on the steps outside the castle by the jarred entrance doors, their fingers lazily gripping cigarettes, smoke rising up from their lips into the sky. These were serious talks, the sort of talks that you can't chance somebody coming down from the dormitories for. Talks about lovers and feelings, things you bottled up deep down in your chest, things you didn't tell anyone else except the moon and the other part of your soul, the part you knew wouldn't judge you no matter what.
"Sometimes I wonder, James, if I'd never met you and Moony if I'd have turned out as bad as my brother?" Siris lowered the cigarette from his mouth and looked over at James, purple-blue in the night.
"Regulus isn't that bad, Sirius," James said. "Even if you'd ended up just like him, you wouldn't be evil."
"I wouldn't be good, either," he said, breathing out a long stream of smoke, which rose up and faded into the sky.
James shrugged.
"What if I was?" Sirius asked, looking over at James. "Evil, I mean?"
"You haven't got it in you to be evil," James answered.
"I do, I could," Sirius said, a playful smirk coming over his face and James knew the second before he did it what Sirius was about to do - he lunged forth, intending to pin James but James rolled out of the way and, laughing, he ran down the stairs, Sirius going after him, the cigarettes forgotten, left behind to smolder themselves out on the stone staircase. James was ahead by quite a lot and then Sirius raised his wand and shouted --
"CRUCIO!"
James was taken back by the betrayal more than the pain of the spell. The electricity of the magic sizzled as it cut across his skin like a thousand cuts and he yelled out, voice echoing off the walls of the castle as Sirius Black stood over him, staring down into James's face with a grin plastered on and that loud barking laugh...
"Beg me not to kill you, Prongs," said Sirius Black's voice, his red eyes dancing with amusement as James writhed on the floor, fingers scraping the flagstones beneath him, bits of straw clinging to his hair in the cell where he lay. Sirius's sneering face seemed to surround him. "Or beg me to kill you - either way would work just fine... The result will be the same."
"But Sirius would never do that to you!" Lily's said.
James looked around - so did Voldemort, the cruciatus curse coming from his wand faltered for but a second.
"Sirius would NEVER betray you like that!" Lily shouted, "James you know better! You know this isn't Sirius. It's Voldemort! It's Voldemort!"
It was like a muggle cartoon that James had watched now and then, which came on the telly before Doctor Who some night... It was a cartoon about a dog and some people who solved mysteries and in the end of every episode there was this brilliant moment where the dog's owner would tear a mask off the bad guy, gripping the hair on their head and yanking and off would come the perfect mask of the person the bad guy was pretending to be.
"Evans?" James said in surprise as Lily was suddenly there, breaking into the vision, breaking into the memory, reaching up and taking hold of Sirius Black's hair and pulling the mask off. The curse was stopped and Voldemort stood over James suddenly in the memory as the grounds of Hogwarts seemed to blow away in a wind.
"It's been him all along, James!" Lily yelled, "Derek Bell knew you better than to ever think you were a coward! And Mum would never hurt you. You know that she wouldn't hurt you."
"Stand aside girl," Voldemort hissed at Lily.
"No!" Lily shouted and she stepped between James and the Dark Lord in his memory, just as she'd done when she'd finally arrived to the cell to rescue him.
"STAND ASIDE!"
"I SAID NO!" Lily shouted and the words echoed through James's mind - from this invasion of the memory and from the memory itself as Lily held her wand in her fist, Voldemort's face twisted in anger at her defiance. "I didn't back down when you were there in flesh," Lily snapped at the sinister face in James's mind, "Why would I back down now that you're nothing but a perverse memory?"
Voldemort hissed and suddenly she felt as though she'd been slammed to the wall so hard her spine felt like it had cracked and she realized it was James who had been thrown against the cell wall, and he was cowering in the corner, pressed as far into it as his body could get, and crouching down, covering his face, crying, as inferi crossed the room, their unfocused eyes rolled in unnatural directions, their dead limbs dragging as they walked, horrible snuffling, unbreathing... The smell of the rotting corpses filled the room... and the dead faces were transfigured so that Lily was looking around at the faces of all their greatest friends.
"Please," James sobbed, "Please no more, please --"
How many times had this been done?
How many times had James faced these monsters?
They shuffled ever on without coming any closer, like apparitions maintaining a threat designed specifically to torture him slowly, over a long period of time... unstoppable, always coming, keeping him in a suspended state of fearful panic.
"James," Lily said and she was there again, breaking into the memory, kneeling beside him on the floor of the cell. "James, listen to me, this isn't real. Those aren't real. They're - they're images in your mind, they're games that You Know Who is playing with you. Look - I'm right here, see, look at me." She lifted his chin to look into her eyes. "I'm right here. So I can't be one of those - those things over there, can I?"
Tears poured from his eyes. "Lily," he said, voice strained and his lower jaw trembled with fear as he stared up at her...
She stood up and she turned to the inferi. She waved her wand and started cutting through them, magic slashing at the figures coming toward her. She forced out of her mind the fact that they looked like Remus and Charlus, that they looked like Alice and Frank and Sirius and Dora, like Fabian and Gideon, like Dorcas and Minnie and Derek Bell and Bilius Weasley. She forced herself not to see Maryrose Jenkins or Regulus Black or any of the other likenesses that dragged their feet across the floor but to remember they were figments, lies, bits of memory and dreams that had been twisted and turned and made into nightmares designed by the sick mind of a hideous tryrant.
One by one, the inferi fell into smoke as she blasted them, fought them, pushed them away, defended James Potter with every ounce of herself... Each one was shouting some horrible thing to him, screaming something of James's insecurities to him.
"My real brother's dead and it should've been you instead!" Sirius was shouting.
"You're so weak you let me go and defend you and left me to die at the hands of the Dark Lord while you ran away," Maryrose was snapping, "You never came for my body, you never cared that I was gone. You let them keep me until they used me and hid me in a morgue. You would've left me there if it wasn't for Sirius!"
"You could've stopped Dolohov," Fabian Prewett said.
"You could've kept us both alive," Gideon Prewett agreed.
"I only favored you because I knew you needed it the most. You were so thick, so slow, so stupid. You only passed because I didn't want to look bad failing you," McGonagall was saying.
"We wanted our first son back," Charlus was saying, staring at James coldly.
"Instead we got you," Dora said.
"You're inadequate," laughed Jasper Odair. "If you'd let me and Lily alone she would have happily married me and she'd have all the babies she could want because at least I would have been able to give her that."
Lily shook her head, "None of them would say these things, James, you know they wouldn't, if you really looked into your heart! You know they don't think poorly of you." Lily was shattering each one as it came, her heart beating wildly, seeing James's fears and insecurities so vividly displayed, so viciously attacking his mind. "They wouldn't, James. This isn't real! This isn't how any of them feel! They're lies!"
"Are they lies?" hissed Voldemort's voice from the dark as she cut down the last of the inferi-ghosts.
"They are," she said. "Lie and words that were never truly spoken."
And in response came the image of herself, slightly younger, hair in braids over her shoulders, wearing her Hogwarts uniform. She felt sick as the inferi-ghost of herself pushed by her and walked right up to James, getting closer than any of the others had done. "You're insufferable," Lily heard her own voice saying, "You're a shoddy person and you only have one concern - yourself - and that's not what makes a marriage, Potter. A toerag! An utter idiot! A horrible bully! Bugger off! All you are is a poor choice with a big ego!"
"No!" Lily screamed and she shoved her own self aside, watching the inferi-ghost of her image shatter into smoke as she hit the floor. "James, I was wrong when I said that, don't hold onto that. Hold onto the good things. Hold onto how much I love you --"
"Love will make you weak, Potter," Voldemort's voice echoed over hers.
She stood up and turned to face the dark of the dungeons around them, where James still was cowered into the corner. She blocked him, stood protective against whatever was about to come out of the shadows of his mind.
Cackling echoed from every angle, but Lily wouldn't budge, she stood and waited, tense, wand gripped tightly in her hand, eyes flashing.
"You can't have him!" she shouted, "This black magic, whatever you've put in his mind, whatever sort of invasive... possession... you've got on his mind, you can't have him."
"I already have," Voldemort's voice hissed. Lily's eyes met his as he emerged from the darkest corner, his face pale as he shuffled forward across the flagstones. "I've already won this battle. I'm here aren't I?" Voldemort laughed, smiling, "I've already taken his mind."
Lily raised her wand. "Well fuck you. I'm taking him back."
And she slashed her wand across Voldemort's chest.
"Because love isn't weak... and neither am I!"
With a jab of her wand, the edges of Voldemort seemed to glow white-hot and from the very center of his chest there seemed to be a light that shot him through, that lit him up and with a great burst, there was a flood of light that melted the cell away, melted away the flagstones and the straw and the bars and the walls and the light surrounded her and James and she turned and she ran for him, where he was crouched, cowered down in fear and she grabbed onto his shoulders and when she touched him a rush of sensation filled her - and him - as though they were falling...
"Arresto momentum!" Sirius's voice cut through the light...
And suddenly, James was hanging over the water in the lake beside the camp in fourth year, laughter in his lungs and Sirius on the shore, grinning as he released James into the water with a splash. He came up from the shallow water spluttering and grinning, shaking the water from his hair so that it flew in a hundred directions, eyes bright with youth. "That was brilliant!" he shouted and Sirius crowed loudly in return.
And Sirius was flinging his arm around James and promising him that he'd die for him as steadfastly as he lived for him.
And there was Remus Lupin, smiling at James with admiration and appreciation. "Remcyclopedia strikes again!" James was laughing, smiling and Remus was saying that he knew things because he'd looked it up knowing that James was going through stuff, because he wanted to have answers when James asked the questions.
And there was Peter scrambling after James, looking up to him, never once doubting his hero... Peter looked at James the way James looked at Derek Bell, James suddenly saw.
Regulus Black was hugging James, feeling safe for the first time in years.
And James was remembering Jasper's note asking James to be his best man and the rapt attention with which Odair had stared at him as he delivered his advice at the stag party....
And Maryrose was in the Room of Requirement insisting that James should be leader because he was so very brave...
And there was Frank and Ali nodding along. Frank telling James he'd not choose any other person to go into a battle with than James and Ali hugging James and laughing, smiling... There were flashes of so many faces - McGonagall in pride-filled tears watching the four Marauders sail across the Lake at the end of their seventh year, Hagrid grinning and greeting James at the gate to the castle, both of the Prewett twins looking impressed after a particularly good lesson demonstration that James had taken part in... There was Charlus and Dora, shouting with joy and dancing with their son in the kitchen when he got his Hogwarts letter when he turned eleven, and Charlus shouting when James revealed he'd won the Quidditch House Cup. There was Dumbledore and Minnie presenting him with the badge for Headboy and the smiling, cheering, and laughter of the entire school of Hogwarts, all spilling out from blue-dyed faces...
And then Sirius was howling at the moon as they stood on a cliffside, Lily beside James, as fireworks exploded far overhead in bursts of bright color and James turned and stared at her and she looked at him and she whispered, "There are loads of happy things still in your mind, Potter."
He smiled.
A hundred thousand good memories flooded all at once, like someone had dropped confetti made of polaroids of all the best things in his life so that they rained around him, split second flashes of laughter and jokes, smiles, hugs, kisses, dances, moonlight, barking dogs, umbrellas, orange cats named Roger, gentle touches and caresses, butterbeer cookies, the smell of broomwax and popcorn....
And they were in the woods on their wedding day and his mouth was quirked up in that grin she loved so much. She looked like an angel wrapped in white, her eyes staring up at him.
"Like this one, Evans?" he whispered.
"It's one of my favorites," she answered.
"Mine, too."
She moved closer, then she whispered in his ear, "James... I want to make another vow to you."
"Another vow?" he asked, the memory rippling on the edge of regular consciousness now.
Lily really was leaning close and whispering these words in his ear, right that very moment.
"Yes. I promise you that I'll love you through the good and the bad alike, through memories and fears, dreams and nightmares, smiles and tears... anything... and I promise to remind you in the bad that there are good things, and for the rest of my life, I swear that I'll help you take back anything that You Know Who tries to steal. He can't have your memories, James... they're a part of you, and you promised yourself to me."
He turned toward her in their bedroom then, faced her, their eyes met and he stared into hers... and he kissed her...
And another round of love magic started as their lips locked...
The sound of his laughter, and hers echoing along side it...
The sound of his name on her lips.... and the sound of hers on his...
The way she looked at him. The way he looked at her.
The smell of amortentia - of vanilla and strawberries, of the woods and clove, of each other...
The familiarity of the rhythm of his hips... his hands pressed into hers, palm-to-palm... blurring the line between the memories in the love magic and the moment they were living in as her legs wrapped around his waist and his teeth held onto her lower lip gently tugging...
She could feel the strength in his arms.
"You're so strong," she breathed, running her hands over his muscles. "And he says love makes people weak," Lily laughed, breathlessly. She shivered as his hands ran down the length of her, as his mouth was kissing her skin.
"You've always made me stronger, Lily."
And it was true. She'd seen it in there, somewhere tucked in between the flashes of his memories, the times he'd been weak and about to give in and her name or her face or her voice fluttered into his mind... The way he'd surged with strength, fought back against Dark Lord and werewolves, against inferi and curses... How in the moments that he had fallen, she was always there to pick him back up again and again and again.
Her love had been saving him before it was even realized.
Before she'd even felt it, he'd felt it.
As though it had permeated from that very moment through his memories so strongly that it had existed within him all along.