What if Lily Potter Died But James Potter Survived?
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Voice Acting & Narration: Steven Waters @bobablackfly602
Writing: Myself, @nicholasmartin6526, @khuz377 , @WatashiNoKuraiTenshi, and @PathofDragonsRadio
The house is still smoking when Sirius arrives.
He does not slow the motorcycle down, does not circle the street, does not take a moment to absorb the sight of what used to be one of the safest addresses in England. He lands hard on the scorched grass and he runs, because if he stops moving he will have to start thinking, and he cannot think yet. The front of the house has been blown outward. The garden is scorched in a perfect, terrible radius from whatever happened here.
He finds James in the living room. Alive, breathing in shallow ragged pulls, a deep cut running across his forehead with dried blood tracking down one side of his face. Sirius drops to his knees beside him and puts two fingers to his throat and finds a pulse, steady and present and stubborn, and closes his eyes for exactly one second.
Then he hears it. From upstairs. A baby crying with the absolute commitment of a child who has been at it for a long time and has no intention of stopping.
Sirius sprints.
The door to the nursery is open. He does not let himself look at anything except the cot, certainly not at the floor, or at the woman beside it, the woman who had been his sister in every way that counted. He lifts Harry out and Harry grabs a fistful of his jacket without stopping crying, and Sirius turns and walks back through the door and does not look back.
He will not look back.
He carries Harry downstairs and kneels beside James again, puts two fingers to his throat because he needs to feel it again, needs to be certain. James's eyes open. They find Sirius. Then they find the small, tear-streaked face pressed against Sirius's chest, one fist wrapped tightly in the leather of his jacket. James reaches up without a word. Sirius shifts Harry into his arms. James holds his son against his chest and his face does something that has no name in any language.
JAMES: "Lily."
SIRIUS: "She didn't make it."
Neither of them speaks after that. There is nothing to say yet. Some things have to be survived before they can be said.
Remus arrives on the third day. He has been in Wales. He came as fast as he could.
He finds James sitting up in a hospital bed, Harry asleep across his lap, and Sirius in the chair beside them with his head tipped back and his mouth slightly open, theoretically keeping watch. The room is very quiet, the kind of quiet that settles in around grief before anyone has found words for it. Remus stands in the doorway for a moment. James looks at him. Something passes between them, a whole conversation conducted in the language of people who have known each other too long and lost too much, and then Harry wakes up.
He looks around the unfamiliar room with the serious expression of a baby conducting a full assessment of his situation. His eyes find Remus standing in the doorway. He considers this. Then he reaches out one hand. Remus crosses the room. Offers his finger. Harry grabs it with the gravity of someone making a decision.
HARRY: "Mooey."
Sirius opens one eye. James makes a sound that he will never be able to describe to anyone. Remus looks down at the small person holding his finger and tries very hard to find something to say.
REMUS: "That is not my name."
HARRY: "Mooey."
SIRIUS: "He's right, you know. That's your name now."
REMUS: "It absolutely is not."
JAMES: "Uncle Mooey."
REMUS: "James, I will leave."
He does not leave. He sits on the edge of the bed and lets Harry hold his finger and looks at the two people remaining from the best years of his life, and he understands, quietly and completely, that whatever comes next, they are going to do it together. A baby mispronounced his name and they laughed. That is family.
Harry is two years and three months old the first time James takes him to the grave. He does not understand where they are. He does not understand why his father's voice sounds different here, softer and lower, like he is trying not to wake someone. James sets the flowers down. Lily's favourites. He has been buying them every week since the funeral, keeping them ready for when the time came, because this was always going to happen and he was always going to be prepared for it even if he was not ready for it. Those are two very different things.
He crouches down to Harry's level.