Nocturne

Nocturne

"This is the battleground between day and night."--Victor Hugo, final words.

Now?

Are you sure?

Lily--

Lily!

"Aren't you?" Her eyes and her posture are defiant, but James can see her hands shaking as she reaches to remove his glasses.

Take Harry and go!

"Aren't you?" she asks. But it's a question as much self-directed as anything else. And as valiantly as she does try to hide it, her voice quavers.

"Well, it's better than mitosis anyway."

Lily scowls theatrically. "For once in your life, Mr. Potter, be serious."

"Well, Mrs. Potter..." He's starting to grin. Lily prepares for the worst. "If you want him here instead..."

The eye rolling is deafening.

"It had to be said," James says apologetically, offering her a rather sheepish grin. He rolls up onto his elbows, eyes thoughtful. "I like the name Harry. What do you think?"

"What if it's a girl?" Lily points out.

"Well, I don't think she'd like to be called Harry."

"You idiot!" She laughs, and then grows somber again. "But Voldemort--"

It's him!

"Are we being selfish?" she whispers.

She didn't have to say it aloud; it's already evident in her eyes:

How can we do this now? How can we have a baby now?

"Well I suppose..." His brow furrows, and he shifts backward a bit so that they are both upright, eye to eye.

He reaches for his glasses sitting on the nightstand, puts them on. He was always hopelessly nearsighted. His lips are tensed, eyes taking on that bewildered look she remembers from school, but that seems suddenly out of place on this face.

Go! Run!

The square lines of cheek to chin, the untidy mass of hair--those are the same. But there's something lingering about his eyes, maybe. Eyes dim, distant, unfocused in the darkness, but alive and perfectly clear. Something behind them reeling, shifting, furling and unfurling, combining and recombining. He's older, she realizes, he's older somehow. Compulsively, her hand moves toward his.

I'll hold him off!

Lily's hand grasps for his. It's small, smaller than James had ever realized. He traces it back to her elbows, sharp from the smooth spindle of her arms. Square shoulders and spidery hands. Curves and angles jutting into and against each other. Woman and youth coalescing vibrantly under her flesh. It composes a sort of awkward geometry--discordant and harmonious, and natural and basic and unfathomable and glorious.

"Well..." James says again. He scoots back around, so that they are lying side by side, both staring up at the ceiling. Their fingers are still entangled atop the bedsheet.

"I remember," he says softly, eyes closed, "I remember when I was little--I couldn't have been older than five...I would go walking with my father all the time. Round by the pond, through the woods--nearly everywhere. There was one day when my dad and I, we were sitting on some hill together, and some ways off there was a bunch of people grouped round in the cemetery. I asked my father, I asked him what was going on, and he told me it was a funeral. I don't think I quite understood what that meant, but I didn't say anything of course. Then suddenly, he said to me that things...don't go on forever. That there would be a time when he would have to die--when all of us had to die." There was a distant expression on James' face. "You can imagine, a five-year-old, what that was like. To learn that everything must someday...come to an end. And I remember telling him, if we all had to die sooner or later I didn't think it was worth living at all."

He opens his eyes, and turns over on his side to face her, bracing himself against his elbows. "But it is worth it, isn't it?" And there is such quiet, earnest intensity in his gaze, and such warmth in his touch....

He is leaning in towards her,

reaching...

Not Harry! Please not Harry!

...Reaching for beauty, for lucidity and meaning...

Take me, kill me instead--!

...For something beyond...for something...

Have mercy...have mercy...

...Something found only in oblivion--

James' eyes are closed again, and his expression is blissful. He's so close Lily can feel her hair flutter when he breathes.

"Happy Halloween, Lily."