Here We Go Again
Chapter 34: The Boy Who Lived
POV: James
She was laying beside me with her head resting on my chest. Her left hand was over my abdomen, her fingertips were tracing patterns, like a whisper, over the material of my navy-colored hoodie. She hadn't spoken a word to me for about a day. Her silence was something I grew accustomed to in our relationship, since her mind had been plagued by its own voices that she chose to listen to more than the ones outside of her head, but I found that I wasn't contributing conversation to fill in the silence, either. And I think that the silence grew because of me, that I'm the one that caused it because I hadn't spoken since leaving Hogwarts. For the first time I didn't want to talk, I didn't want to hear conversations and useless chit-chat. Voices bothered me. And maybe she knew that. Maybe she knew that all I needed was silence and unspoken talk through the traces of letters she wrote over me.
When Lily first came thundering into the greenhouse with the worst news that I've ever listened to, the Healers of St. Mungo's said Dad had three days to show progress and respond to any of their treatments in order for them to promise that he'd recover from the attack. Three days was all they gave him. Most of my relatives thought that three days was enough. Ever the hopeful ones, the survivors of an impossible war, praisers of the Boy-Who-Lived, they believed that my dad would conquer the dark magic in his system and that he'd be opening his eyes by the night of the first day like the champion he was.
Their hero failed them.
Harry Potter never opened his eyes that first night. By the second day of his comatose state, Dad's healer, a man named Ed Lane, came out to the waiting room of the hospital with Aunt Angelina beside him. Everyone who could stay every hour of the day in St. Mungo's stayed, and when the others weren't working, they rejoined the family. Friends of the family offered their time to wait as well. But on that second day that Healer Lane and Aunt Angelina came out, Mum, Teddy, Lily, Gran, Emily, and I were the only ones there.
'How is he?' demanded Mum as soon as her eyes spotted the old, white-haired Healer and her sister-in-law. 'How's Harry? Is he awake?'
Aunt Angelina's dark eyes gleamed over with sadness. That was enough of an answer to not require a verbal one. He hadn't woken up yet. If he would've, surely my aunt would have raced with sheer excitement to inform us rather than let her colleague do the talking as she lingered silently beside him.
'Any improvements?' Mum further questioned, hopeful to hear a response she'd been dreaming of getting. But she didn't. Once again, Aunt Angelina's miserable gaze and tight-lipped grimace said enough.
'Then what is it?' inquired Teddy angrily, wrapping an arm around my mother's shoulders as her life deflated right before our eyes. 'If he hasn't woken or or shown any signs of improvement, why are you—?' He stopped himself.
I've known Teddy all my life. Mum and Dad adopted him into their family when he was six and his grandmother Andromeda died, but I think he was always destined to be my brother and a part of the huge Weasley/Potter clan. He was seven years older than me, my big brother, and I always looked up to him. Just like Dad, Teddy was someone I thought a hero. There was nothing that Teddy didn't do that I didn't think was amazing. I thought he was the most talented, funny, badass bloke in the history of the world. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to be just as funny (even funnier), mischievous (borderline reckless, instead), smart (even smarter), cool (wicked cool to them highest degree), loyal (fierce at heart), and strong (borderline indestructible). Teddy was never scared, experienced loss of words, or emotional.
But there was something so haunting that crossed his grey eyes when he stopped speaking to the Healers that I can still replay accurately in my mind and feel frightened to the core. A realization sunk into his expression, morphing himself into an image of utter grief and fear and heartbreak.
Teddy squeezed Mum's shoulders tighter, blinking back tears.
'I'm afraid the progression of the dark magic in Mister Potter's internal system has spread since our last scan,' informed Healer Lane with a monotone. 'His white-blood cell count has dropped dramatically, his left lung has stopped functioning, and his heart rate is decreasing every hour. I'm afraid, at this rate, that Mister Potter's heart will give out in two days time.'
Lily released a loud sob; Gran went to envelope her in a hug, her own tears rushing down her face; Teddy held Mum together, but she was slipping, her knees shaking, her body trembling; my older, adoptive brother squeezed his eyes, afraid to face the world; Emily took in a deep breath at my side, choking slightly at the sob that wanted to leave her lips, but she clutched my hand with all her might and refused to break; and I lost function. My thoughts stopped. Everything stopped inside of me.
'We're still trying,' Aunt Angelina offered hurriedly, her professionalism on the verge of going out the window and committing suicide. 'Ginny, I promise you we will try. I'm not giving up on him, I promise.'
Healer Lane stepped back from our huddled group, giving us a sad gaze before turning and heading out of the waiting room. Aunt Angelina didn't follow after. She marched over to Teddy and Mum and embraced them. Teddy allowed her in, and the woman who'd we all hounded day and night for answers and expectations on my dad's recovery cried silently with my mother.
All that was yesterday morning.
Throughout the day, people kept coming through more than usual. They appeared with glum expressions, grief in their eyes, sympathy in their voice, pity in their hugs when they regarded my mother or other family members. It was almost as if the world was preparing to say goodbye to Harry Potter.
I couldn't breathe. All those people coming by combined with other families and friends and Healers and assistants only made the waiting room of St. Mungo's so much more crowded. How did all the others stand there, huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, and not gasp for air? Why was I the only one choking?
I crept my way out of the hospital wing yesterday night when Albus showed up again with Scorpius loyally beside them. I'd been worried about the kid, but he had other demons that needed to be dealt without my intrusion. And it was a horrible thing to confess, but I just couldn't take his rubbish at the moment, either. I was a shit brother, I knew, but I needed as much space as possible. So when I finally found it, when I walked out to the gardens of the hospital, I fell onto my knees and soaked up all the oxygen I'd been lacking.
But it didn't pass through.
I felt the cold wind of the night touch my skin, freeze my cheeks, but it just wasn't going down to my lungs. In fact, it was escaping. I started gasping. My palms landed on the grass and my nails sunk into the blades.
As I was growing dizzy, as I was panicking that I was going to do something stupid like faint, I felt arms around my shoulders pull me up. Emerald eyes looked back at me with such tenderness, such care, such love and understanding.
'Lets go home,' Emily murmured into my ear.
And we did.
That's where we've been for twenty-four hours. We've been locked in my bedroom, laying in my bed, and watching the moonlight illuminate Godric's Hollow outside my window.
My girlfriend's fingertips kept writing I love you, I love you, I love you without a stop over my chest, in the same, slow, and peaceful rhythm. It was all the words I needed at the current moment because she was the only person in the entire world that can make anything better, even if by the slightest. I was miserable, of course I was, but having her beside me lessened the pain considerably.
I was lucky to have her, really. I was the luckiest sod in the world to have someone so amazing, so loving and kind beside me like Emily. When the world is crumbling down, when the sun explodes and leaves you in the darkness, the love of a good one becomes like stars in the night sky. She's my signal of hope.
And almost like she knew that I was thinking about the strength she gave me, of the kind of person she made me, Emily stopped her repetitive lettering pattern and instead made her fingertips write: go.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
With a deep breath, in attempts to collect the courage I'd inherited, I opened the door to the hospital room that held the comatose body of Harry Potter.
It was the first time I was stepping into it.
As the child of someone in critical state, it's not something you wish to see. I know that most people want to be with their parent or loved one when they're at their most vulnerable, because that's what one does when one loves someone with all their heart, but that just wasn't the case for me. Why would I want to step foot into a hospital room to see my father? Why after watching him fly a dragon, be the toughest Head Auror the Ministry of Magic has ever seen, fly a broom at a wicked speed, catch the snitch like he should be playing professional Quidditch, fix stupid, muggle automobiles, reprimand his children when they get out of hand, or pull pranks with Uncle George on Uncle Ron like he was ten, would I want to see him lying there lifeless? Why would I want to see him, a man revered as one of the greatest, bravest, and most talented wizard of our world, be attached to tubes that were basically keeping him alive?
My dad is a hero—he is Harry fucking Potter—and I didn't want to see him motionless on a bed slipping away to the world of the dead.
"This is all my fault," said Teddy.
He was leaning against the left wall beside Dad's bed, his grey eyes were black, the color appropriate for a funeral, representing his grief, and frozen. There was no emotion on his face. It was frightening to see that, such void in him when Teddy had inherited all of his mother's (Dora) quirkiness that Dad and the others loved.
"I was being a prat again," he continued flatly, like he was telling the story to himself and seeing it play before him, "showing off that entire day. I'd gone on a successful raid the night before—caught three criminals singlehandedly without a scratch on my face. I walked into the Ministry, getting pats on the back, congratulations, and promises of drinks so that I could retell my story. The bloody Minister even marched into my office to pay his admiration.
"Dad wasn't impressed, though," he scoffed disgustedly at this point, but I was certain it was meant for himself. "He walked into my office that morning, shutting the door behind him loudly that I could literally hear everyone scrambling on outside halls as if not to be anywhere near him when he came out. You know Dad, he doesn't get angry much, but when he does...'What the hell were you thinking, Teddy?!' he yelled at me. 'If your partner was unavailable you had to report into the Ministry so another Auror could accompany you! You're never supposed to follow after Level One criminals on your own! You could have been killed!'"
He paused. His dark eyes flashed in different colors that I assumed represented the way he was feeling inside. His face was still blank, but now his gaze was starting to let his emotions seep through. He was angry. He was disappointed. He was ashamed. But most disturbingly, he was hating—hating himself. The self-loathing in his eyes caused his cheeks to turn pink, his hands to ball into fists, and the color of his hair to turn from turquoise to a fiery-red.
"Dad left my office and I didn't hear from him until a meeting that afternoon. He wasn't looking at me, but he made a dig at my actions, calling it foolishness, and I got angry. Dad doesn't see it, but I have to work harder than the other Aurors; I've always had, since training. They think I got in because Harry Potter is my adoptive father. Bullshit. I work hard. And I was finally getting the respect I wanted from the older Aurors.
"When the owl came in about a revolt occurring in a member of the Wizengamot's house, some old bastard name Lawrence that has enemies everywhere, I was set to prove Dad wrong. I wanted to show him that I'm a capable Auror. Hell, I told him I didn't need a partner. I could handle myself. The revolters were mental, completely unhinged in order to earn the justice they saw fit. The raid escalated quickly. Ron made it to the second level of the house, two of our other men were still in the yard, trying to push out the threat, and Dad and I were defending Lawrence in the sitting room. I got two revolters, knocked them out flat at the same time. One of their friends shot out Avada at me, but I dodged. I got pissed. I know the bloke saw it in my eyes...I went mental. The git took off and I followed. I abandoned my fucking post and left Dad alone and outnumbered."
Teddy tore away from the wall. Instead of leaving it, he just turned around and punched it. Repeatedly.
I watched with no drive to stop him as he continued to assault the hospital room's wall with his right fist. I just stared. He screamed in anger, letting it morph into a sob. After a few more hits to the wall, he rested his forehead against it, breathing heavily, yet crying at the same time.
I didn't stop him from harming himself, nor did I speak to calm him, not because I blamed him, because I didn't, but because that's how I felt. That anger and misery and uselessness that he felt, that he was letting out, was exactly what I had raging inside of me. But for some reason, unlike Teddy, unlike anyone else, I couldn't do anything about it. I wasn't working. I was just there. Just fucking there.
Taking in a large puff of air, feeling like it was I that was gasping from all the sobbing and screaming, I moved away from the entrance of the door. I closed it behind me and approached, in small paces, towards the bed.
Dad was tucked perfectly into the white sheets of the bed, his arms flat and straight at his sides. His face was pale and blank. Everything about the image before me was a lie. That wasn't my father. My dad didn't sleep on his back, arms at his sides like he was a bloody corpse. Dad slept on his sides, he couldn't sleep wrapped in blankets, he ended up kicking them off, and he was always missing a sock. His glasses were always on the table beside his bed. His hair was always a grand mess, sticking out everywhere, and there was always a hint of his past life on his features when he slept. Decades had gone by since the war, but Dad always relieved it in his dreams.
"I never tell him I love him," were the first words to leave my mouth in such a long time of silence. Teddy stopped crying. Slowly, he turned from the wall and his black eyes were now green, green like Dad's, and they were filled with tears.
"Not enough, anyway. Every letter he sends me he tells me he loves me at the beginning and at the end. Ever since I can remember, he'll come say goodnight and to tell me that he loves me before he goes to sleep. I roll my eyes when he does, because I get it, you know? He loves me, he's my dad—it's sort of expected for him to. But I never say it back. Only sometimes, when I'm happy or I want to get away with something stupid I did."
Tears gathered in my eyes and I didn't bother to hold them back. I hadn't cried, either, now that I think of it. I've just been letting others cry. I've been letting others yell, cry, scream, whisper...
"He's a great dad," I added despite the knot of emotion in my throat. "He's every kid's hero. I admire him. Not just because of all the brilliant things he's done, but because of the type of father that he is. I know I'm young and all, but when I have children, I hope that I can be just like Dad. I want my kids to look at me like we look at him. Most of all, though...Most of all, I hope that he's there to see me be a dad. I haven't done anything remarkable with my life, Ted, and I can't...I can't even fathom the idea that he won't be there to see me become a real man.
"I want him to see me finish Hogwarts. I want him to be proud in the career I pick after, make my own name and way. I want him to be there when I marry Emily, when we have our first kid, and our second, and our third, and be there when they start to walk, when they call him 'grandad' for the first time. I want my kids to love him just as I do, for them to see him as a hero, too. Goddamnit, Teddy, I just want him to live! I want him to get out of that fucking hospital bed and stop this! This isn't how it's supposed to end!"
My brother was beside me right the second I broke.
I didn't think that everything I've been holding inside would come out with so much force, but it did. It shook my knees and folded me over. I dropped against Dad's legs and cried into his kneecaps. I wanted to hold onto his legs like a child does to their parent when he's scared, nervous, or sad. And I was scared. I was scared and I wanted nothing more than my dad's protection. I wanted him to tell me I was safe and that everything was going to be okay.
But Teddy grabbed me and pulled me off our father. He hugged me, pushing my face into his chest, and we both cried onto each other. We both shed tears for the same, agonizing feeling: because we've both been shit sons to a magnificent father, because we were both two children at heart who needed their parent, because we were heartbroken, because we were both terrified, because we both couldn't accept the fact that the man on the hospital bed, our father, was going to end up beneath the ground before his time.
"The last time you two hugged was when you threw James into a lake."
Teddy and I froze at the same moment. Our backs went rigid, our crying stopped, and I could hear his heartbeat just like I could hear mine banging inside my eardrums.
We both turned towards the voice, completely surprised and aghast.
The man on the bed was squinting at us just as his left hand was weakly attempting to pull out the wires he had wrapped around him.
"Teddy was fourteen and you were seven. He was teaching you how to swim. When I pulled you out, he hugged you and cried for an hour. It was kind of funny, but Ginny didn't think so."
"Get Mum," I squeaked at my brother. "Get Mum and a Healer now."
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
"Now, Teddy."
Breathing in life again, Teddy raced out towards the door and I could hear him shouting. As he did that, I gulped down all my fears, but let my tears swim out of my eyes and fall down like waterfalls against my cheeks. I threw myself against my father's legs again, this time holding on tight.
"I love you, Dad," I said with the purest sincerity I owned.
I felt his hand ruffle my hair and a low chuckle rumble out his mouth. "Yeah, I know you do, kid. And I love you, too."
(The Boy Who Lived—they certainly got that right, didn't they?)