“You Have Me. Until Ever Last Star In The Galaxy Dies. You Have Me.”

‘Hold up’

The hand on his back is light, a gentle touch, and for a brief second James is convinced he's imagining it. "..what is it?" he asks softly, voice barely breaking the quiet of their bedroom. Her fist is tangled in the soft fabric of his t-shirt, worn throughout the years, - stolen by her, too, on a number of occasions, - though it's enough motivation to make him sit back down on the edge of the bed, turning to Lily. She had tangled her hair up into a bun before sleeping, though most of it is unraveled now, a flame licking across her pillow. She still looks half asleep, like she hadn't actually meant to reach out to stop him from leaving, but how is he ever supposed to walk away? Dumbledore's owl had come the night before, asking James to meet him urgently just after midnight the next, and he's not one to leave Albus hanging. Not now. Not when every single piece of information is so crucial, so key to turning the war in their favor. They need all the help they can get, and if his former headmaster demands his presence at 2 in the morning, he can't turn away. Still. He's not an idiot. He had planned on getting up a few minutes early before floo-ing, to at least get a cup of coffee and settle his nerves before hopping in the fireplace. And with Lily's hand dropping, moving from his back to tangle her fingers with his own again, James can think of a much better alternative to sitting alone in the kitchen. ".. five more minutes, then," he decides, slumping back to sit against the pillows, using his grasp to tug his wife in a little closer.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ bo burnham: inside sentence meme

part 1/3

“Interesting, now leave me alone.”

“Sorry that I look like a mess”

“____’s been a little depressed.”

“I’m sorry I was gone.”

“Daddy made you your favorite, open wide.”

“It’s a beautiful day to stay inside!”

“The world is changing.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Should I leave you alone?”

“Should I be joking at a time like this?”

“I wanna help to leave this world better than I found it.”

“And the fear is not unfounded.”

“The world is so fucked up.”

“There’s only one thing I can do about it.”

“Making a literal difference metaphorically.”

“So maybe I should just shut the fuck up.”

“I don’t wanna do that.”

“There’s gotta be another way.”

“Lord help me channel sandra bullock in the blind side.”

“I said I’d never be back.”

“But now I’m back on my feet.”

“Pour me a drink and clear my schedule.”

“I’mma FaceTime with my mom tonight.”

“These forty minutes are essential.”

“How’d you guess?”

“And that’s the deepest talk we’ve ever had.”

“It must be complicated.”

“That’s how the world works.”

“It’s similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis.”

“Don’t you know the world is built with blood?”

“That’s pretty intense.”

“No shit.”

“What can I do to help?”

“This isn’t about you.”

“So either get with it or get out of the fucking way.”

“Watch your mouth, buddy.”

“Have you not been fucking listening?”

“I can’t go… I can’t go back.”

“Look at me.”

“Are you going to be on the right side of history?”

“Who are you?”

“Or you can roll up your sleeves and get to work.”

“Is this heaven?”

“Or is it just a white woman’s Instagram?”

“It’s been a decade since you’ve been gone.”

“ Is it necessary that every single person on this planet um, expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?”

“Can any single person shut the fuck up about any single thing for an hour?”

“Is that… Is that necessary?”

“ Who needs a coffee? Cause I’m doing a run?”

“The coffee is free, just like me.”

“I’m an unpaid intern.”

“You just torrent a porn.”

“I’m being a little pretentious.”

“It’s a defense mechanism.”

“ I’m so worried that criticism will be levied against me that I levy it against myself before anyone else can.”

“Oh, if I’m self-aware about being a douchebag, it’ll somehow make me less of a douchebag.”

“Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything.”

“I want this to stop.”

❝ It’s okay — you’re going to be okay! ❞

[TW: injury description.]

"Your faith in me is absolutely reassuring." His words come out dry, forced through the ache of the pain shooting up his leg. He's fine, for the most part, - the Death Eaters they had been chasing have long since been taken care of, and he and Amelia are a bloody good team. "It's a quidditch thing," she had joked, though he had agreed wholeheartedly. Their issue now is the nasty way his leg is twisted, and James stays slumped up against the brick wall, keeping his weight on the other foot. He's had injuries, before. Quidditch, stupid tricks and pranks with the boys, that one time he had flown around to Lily's window of Gryffindor tower in the rain, and had slipped off his broom. Countless full moons. Auror training, and being in the Order. He's seen the inside of the medical wing and St. Mungo's more times than he can count, and he's learned to handle the pain. But it's something else. The hex the Death Eater had used is nasty, and James feels like his leg is still twisting in the wrong direction, tightening, like bone and muscle is fit to burst. The longer they wait, the worse it feels. Amelia's there, though. She's got one arm under his shoulders, helping to keep him upright, and he's more than grateful. There's a grimace on his face, and James fights a groan as his leg twists again, his hand grabbing onto her tightly. "Please don't tell my wife about this," he huffs, giving her a look.

Marauders (click to enlarge)

Rub my back softly as we doze off to the sound of rain falling outside my window.

Send a word and I will write a drabble or headcanon based on it

Sunlight

Alone

Darkness

Streets

Cupboard

Snacks

Doubt

Joy

Peace

Moment

Rain

Hum

Kitchen

Bedroom

Family

Friend

Garden

Relax

Stress

Job

Fury

Betrayed

Absence

Vices

Pets

Absolve

Stars

Scorn 

Praise

Laundry

Papers

Smoke

Wine

Couch

Kiss

Doors

Tree

Dirt

Flowers

Collect

Remove

?+ add your own.

Vices

HEADCANON:

James isn't a regular smoker, despite the fact that he's usually got a pack nearby, at most times.

It had become a bad habit in Hogwarts, something he had picked up the summer before their sixth year with Sirius, under the pretense of looking cool. They didn't look cool, really, but that didn't stop him from trying, hanging out down the far end of the Potter estate, by the lake, lazing on a sunny afternoon. The cigarette balanced carefully in one hand, toes dipping in the water, shirt unbuttoned with the hopes of getting some kind of a tan.

Peter had joined them, once, face scrunching up slightly at the scent of tobacco that clung to their clothes.

He only smokes on occasion. Drunk after a common room party, their sixth year. After winning a match, their seventh. Dawn, after a particularly rough full moon. It's even less frequent, now - he'd had one on the night Lily had told him she was pregnant, and one on the day Harry was born.

James relies on a lot of things to cope. His vices, however, are few and far between.

mxrlenemckn​:

It had been a long, sleepless night.  Sirius had been a welcome break from the heavy realizations the day had brought.  But once they parted ways and the tequila settled into a heavy ball in her stomach she could no longer ignore the truth she had been avoiding.  It was her fault.  Fully ignoring the fact that she was the only one of her family that was in the Order, the only one with a job that would have created any sort of target upon them, there had been a million opportunities to stop it.  She should have made sure the house was protected before they all gathered there, or demanded they wait to gather until they knew they could do so safely.  When she saw the shadow she should have thrown up a shield.  When Travers removed the immobilization spell she should have fought back.  There were a million things she could have done to save her family.  She had failed them once.  It wouldn’t happen again.

July 29, 1981.  She had two and a half years.  Thirty-two months to figure out how to save them.

The headache started setting in as the sun tipped above the horizon – the second night in a row she was up before the sunrise.  She sat on the window sill, watching the sun streak orange and pink across the street.  She sat, listening as the street became alive again.  Muggles stepping out on their way to work, cheerful and energized in that way you became after a short vacation, unaware that for some people everything had changed.

Eventually the hangover induced headache escalated to the point that she was motivated into moving.  Walking barefoot across the worn carpet, she made her way to the medicine cabinet, pulling out one of the hangover potions she kept for moments like these.

She had just unstoppered the vial when a quiet knock came from her front door.  She startled, the cool, glass bottle nearly sliding through her fingers.  Tipping the potion back, she swallowed it in a single gulp and already began to feel the comforting warmth working its way through her.  In another time she may have simply been confused by the door.  Literally no one she knew would be calling on her before noon.  But curiosity go the best of her and she stepped hesitantly forward, loosely holding her wand in her right hand.

But when she opened it and saw James she froze.  It had been a long time.  Maybe not in 1979 – but in 1981 it had been over six months.  And she understood.  She had understood the need for the hiding and for the secrecy without knowing the exact reasons for it.  If they thought it was necessary she supported them; truthfully, she couldn’t think of a circumstance when she wouldn’t have supported the pair of them.  She had always understood, but she missed him and Lily.  And here he was, at her front door as if nothing had changed.

But it had for him – she had seen the look on Lily’s face, heard the glass shatter as she dropped the mugs.  She had seen the way Sirius tensed when she approached him.  She had died, been murdered. They had accepted that and maybe even mourned her a bit – and she was back, some kind of fucking ghost.

With most people she wouldn’t have considered it, but with James it had always been different.  There was something different about someone who had seen you through nearly every stage of life, from an awkward child to an adult.. sort of.   She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace.  She stood there like that for a long moment before letting out a breathy laugh.  “You look like shit, mate,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.  What a fucked up twenty-four hours it had been.  “Come on, let me make some tea.”

--

It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real, it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real.

For how messed up the past day had been, how much information he and Lily had been forced to sit with and process, nothing had prepared him for this. Nothing could. Losing Marlene had taken an entire piece of his heart, ripped it right from his chest, and no force on Earth could have brought her back to him. He had tried to accept that, tried to live with it, had mourned every day since Moody had come to them to break the news, and James had to use every ounce of strength he had to keep Lily upright, to cling onto her like it was the only thing keeping him holding on, too. 

And now, she was here. Hugging him. Sane and sober enough to joke about how he looked.

The last time he’d seen her had been in a fucking grave.

She was everything like he remembered. Eighteen years old and bright eyed, even with the hangover that haunted her expression. Blonde hair in waves around her shoulders, wand in hand, still in the same clothes she wore the night before. Sirius had gone to see her, Lily had explained, and James had needed the few hours to reason with the fact that Marlene, his Marlene, had come back to them. As much as he’d wanted to run to her as soon as Lily had told him, James knew it was a reality he couldn’t face.

Hell, it was the exact same thing stopping him from running back to the estate, crying for his parents.

She was warm. Very much real, and very much alive. Her arms were tight around him, voice as choked up as he felt, and James stayed quiet as she suggested tea, the comment so bizarrely normal that some part of him refused to believe it was happening at all. Maybe he was still dead. Maybe this was some kind of purgatory, while Marlin or God or whoever was up there decided what to do with him, after he hadn’t done enough. Maybe this was hell, forcing him to relive the past two years of losing his friends, and his family, and fighting a losing war, and facing Voldemort again, and learning how to fucking handle everything he’d done wrong in this world.

Or. Maybe it wasn’t.

His hand lifted before he could stop it, catching Marlene’s cheek. 

They always could have been something.

“.. you’re really here?” he asked finally, still in the threshold of her home, afraid to take another step forward. James searched her eyes, looking for the truth in them, and felt tears in his own. “You’re -”

‘ hold up ‘

He lets out a strangled yelp as the collar of his shirt is roughly tugged from behind, and James tries not to trip over his own feet as he's pulled back into a doorway. He's already on high-alert, heart beating rapidly in his chest, pounding in his ears, and changing their hiding place had been a bad decision. His palms are sweaty, grip loose on his wand as his back is pressed against the cool stone of Hogwarts' ancient walls, and while part of him wants to keep pushing forward, to keep their heads low and their position a Godric-damned secret, it's becoming an increasingly difficult tactic to maintain. Sirius is nowhere to be found, after taking a wrong turn on the fourth floor, Remus and Peter having split off within moments of the team's arrival. James feels decidedly out of place, nose-to-nose with Marlene in the tiny doorway as rushed footsteps hurry by, not stopping to investigate their spot. It's the most intense game of muggle hide-and-seek he's ever played. Not that he's ever played it before. Marlene is staring him down, gaze pinned to his own, and James can't look away. It's years of friendship, over a decade of knowing each other, bottled up into one intense stare-down that he doesn't actually remember agreeing to take part in. There's a storm in her eyes, he notices, something that's always been brewing under the surface, - and not for the first time, James is wondering what's on her mind. She's his favorite type of mystery. She looks like she's about to say something when someone else runs by, again, footfall echoed in the halls around them, and James resists the urge to flinch when they come just a little too close to their hiding spot. "You owe me," she states finally, when the quiet that signals safety and a close call creeps up on them again, and James grins at her.