The Marauder Monologues

JAMES POTTER: "The Best Times"

The first two years I was married to Lily were the best times of my life. If I had to return to a time in my life and spend the rest of eternity there, I would ask for it to be the times between 1978 and 1980, and I would go there, no questions asked. Lily and I graduated school and were married in 1978; then we were all members of the Order of the Phoenix, living in our smallish flats in the wizarding village not far from Hogwarts. We spent our time together, kidding around like we were still in school, but knowing that we were working for the common good of the world. We were never afraid of serious harm, or else believed ourselves above being harmed. We had everything.

Then Lily and I found out we were expecting a child, and my views on everything changed. It got to where I would lie awake at night thinking about this: I wanted life to be different for my son or daughter. And therefore my life would be different. On one hand, I wanted to be out there, fighting, taking out Voldemort's supporters so our child would grow up in a safer world. He or she would never have to know what it was like to fear someone so much, you couldn't even say their name. But on the other hand, I didn't want to be out there risking my life, getting killed for the cause. Not because I didn't want to die - because I didn't want to abandon Lily and the baby. I didn't want my child to know what it was like to lose a parent. I know. Lily and I both went through it twice, and we wanted to be there for that baby, forever.

But we were also sworn to the Order of the Phoenix. Dumbledore made it clear that we were all there of our free will, and that if we so chose we could take our skills to the Aurors at the Ministry of Magic or work on our own. However, we all knew he had assembled us as his personal task force, and none of us would have dared insult him that way. We were completely loyal to him, and though we never swore a legally binding oath to work with him, our word was as good as such. None of us were going to leave Albus Dumbledore.

There were quite a few of us in the Order. Myself and Lily, Remus, Sirius, and Peter were the youngest. It was unusual, all five of us fresh out of school and all, but Dumbledore wanted us there. The others were all a little older: Professor McGonagall; Alastor Moody, universally regarded as the best Auror alive; Lane Levine, a former Ministry official; Mundungus Fletcher and Arabella Figg, two more Aurors, whom we'd heard mentioned quite a few times - they were pretty good too; Frank Longbottom, whom we'd been to school with, and his wife Nancine; and within a year or so, Tatiana Shiresong joined us after leaving her job with Gringotts.

We were all Aurors. Dumbledore himself trained us, with the help of Alastor Moody. We learned all the tricks we weren't supposed to know, all the tactics the Death Eaters were most likely to use. I learned the telltale signs of the Imperius Curse and how to fight it so well I could recite them in my sleep. Lily's aim with her wand was impeccable. We were all getting quite good at what we did, and we were proud. So was Dumbledore. The Ministry of Magic wasn't too sure it liked the idea of a private task force, but it was Albus Dumbledore in charge, so they allowed us to continue operation. They couldn't have stopped us if they'd tried, anyway. The Order of the Phoenix was the best there was.

It was the night we were chasing Evan Rosier that I really had a fright. It was about a year and a half into our time with the Order, and Lily had just found out she was pregnant. We'd known for only a few weeks. And Sirius and I were out there in the dark, on a rainy, moonless night, chasing Rosier through Hogsmeade, trying not to lose him. He'd been spotted, so Dumbledore had sent us out to bring him in - alive, he always insisted, bring them in alive if it was possible.

We got to the outskirts of the village, well past the Shrieking Shack, towards where the forest got truly wild. We thought we had him cornered. We started to give him the speech Aurors always had to give while bringing people in. Sirius was looking for others hiding in the forest nearby. I was giving him the speech, approaching him with my wand out - and I forgot the most important step. I forgot to use the Disarming Spell. It was because his hands were empty, or so I thought - it was moonless and raining - and I thought he was harmless. No magic without a wand, right? And I got close to him, told him to turn around, and he blasted me with the Cruciatus Curse out of nowhere.

I don't know what possessed him to do it, knowing that Sirius was right there. Or maybe it was the smartest thing he could have done, because when I began screaming and writhing on the ground at Rosier's feet, Sirius nearly dropped his wand in shock. Sirius jumped Rosier, who fell and broke the curse - I was still screaming, it hurt so badly. I couldn't think, couldn't see, couldn't breathe. Rosier nearly hit Sirius with the Killing Curse, but Sirius got out of the way just in time, and the Curse took down an abandoned shack behind us. While Sirius was making sure he was still alive and crawling over to me, Rosier escaped into the forest. It was a good thing there weren't other Death Eaters out there, because if there had been, we would have died that night.

I was shaking on the ground - I could hardly stand up for five or ten minutes. Sirius helped support me and tried to get me to walk back to the village, but I couldn't. I thought I would faint from the Curse's pain, of course, but more than anything I was afraid. It was a brush with mortality. I wasn't invincible - I could die.

"What's wrong? Prongs - James!" said Sirius, trying to get my attention. "What's the matter? You're alive, we're both alive."

"But we almost weren't," I muttered, leaning against a tree to catch my breath. The rain was still pouring on us. Sirius watched in shock as I tried not to cry. "Sirius, we nearly died. Died! Do you understand that? One careless move and we're gone forever."

"James...we're all going to die sometime," he said, misunderstanding my fear.

"No!" I said heatedly. "I'm not afraid of dying - not afraid for myself. I'm afraid for Lily - and the baby." I slid down and sat at the base of the tree, trying to stop shaking. "I'm going to be a father, Sirius, I can't let my child grow up without a father."

"James - it won't." Sirius knelt with me and looked me in the eye. "I swear it on my life, James. I'm your best friend. I will not let anything happen to you. I will not let anything happen to your son or daughter. I swear it on my life."

We sat there, in the mud beneath the tree, and then embraced like brothers. Finally I let him help me up and we returned to Hogsmeade, and from there to report to Dumbledore.

When our son was born the next year, Lily and I asked Sirius to be the godfather. He accepted.

Harry had to be the most well-loved baby ever born on this earth. Lily and I took one look at him and knew he was the epitome of perfection. Nothing would ever come close to being as flawless as our son. He had my hair and face, and Lily's eyes. He had the unending affections of two parents, a godfather, and an assortment of about a million of our old colleagues, classmates, teachers, and friends. His name was put down in the books for Hogwarts the day he was born - 31 July, 1980.

We made sure the delivery was at St. Mungo's - we wanted to be in the best, safest hospital there was for our firstborn's birth. And when Harry was finally born, it was the most perfect moment of my life. Graduation, the moment I proposed to Lily, the wedding, didn't hold a candle to this one moment when I was finally complete, when I finally knew what my purpose on this earth was: to be the best father I could be to this child.

They wrapped him up and handed him to Lily, and we couldn't wait to get our hands on him. He was so - there's no other word for it - perfect. He was wailing, so Lily held him to her chest and cooed softly to him, like she'd been his mother for years instead of minutes. He began to stop, and Lily was crying, and I realized I was too. I had one arm around Lily's shoulders and the other just touching our son; I leaned over and kissed Lily, then softly pressed my lips to our son's forehead. Somewhere in that moment he stopped crying and was just watching us in a sort of wonderment.

"He has your eyes," I whispered, unable to take my own eyes off him. I can't explain the love I felt, the love that grew and firmly planted itself in my soul at that moment. "Harry has your eyes."

All of our friends were there in the waiting room during the delivery, anxious to be there when the first of the next generation came into this world. And they were all there when our son was born. They drew straws to see who would get to come into the room first to see Harry, since only three others would be allowed outside of Lily and myself. Hospital policy, it was; immediately following the birth, we could have up to three other family members or friends come in, then they would take care of Harry and let Lily get some much-needed rest.

Somehow Sirius got in first, and he entered very cautiously, like too much noise might somehow harm us. He approached the bed where we were all sitting, and Lily handed Harry to me. Our son still wasn't crying - he was just watching us with those brilliant green eyes. I stood and placed him so carefully in Sirius's arms, and Sirius held him stiffly...he was so afraid he would drop Harry, or hurt him somehow. And I looked up and saw that Sirius Black, the Ladies' Man, the eternal prankster, was close to tears. "He's amazing," he whispered to us, his voice tight with emotion.

"Yeah," I said, unashamed of the tears still on my face. I reached back for Lily's hand, and that was when she nodded at me. It was okay for me to ask him now. "Sirius," I said, "Lily and I want you to be the godfather. Will you do that for us?"

Sirius sniffed. "Yeah, James," he said, looking at us in utter gratitude. "I will. I will...thank you..." Then he kissed Harry very gently, like I had done, and whispered, "Love you, kid. Your godfather loves you." He sniffed again, trying to regain his composure, and slowly returned him to Lily's arms. "I'll let the others come in now, okay?" He kissed Lily's cheek, and hugged me tightly, then left without another word. I don't think he could have spoken at that moment anyway.

He told us later that we had honored him beyond anything else he'd ever received. The oath of becoming a child's godparent is sacred. He would be Harry's third parent; he would stand with us at the Naming Ceremony a month later; and if anything were to ever happen to Lily and myself, he would become Harry's guardian. He was Harry's surrogate protector and caregiver, our son's other parent. The godparent is the one person whom the parents believe could love a child as if it was his or her own.

Tatiana Shiresong was the next to come in the room, and she fussed over Harry as any woman would. She kissed both Lily and I, and then let the 'third straw' enter the room, Remus. He held Harry in a kind of muted amazement, awed by the spectacle of our child. I'm not usually sappy, but all our emotions were running high that day, and I'm not embarrassed to say that it was beautiful to watch Remus hold our son - like even though he'd led such a difficult, tragic kind of life, he was still able to appreciate all of that life's beauties. Every one of us was so emotional that day. I'd never cried so much or been so happy in my entire life.

So Lily, Harry, and I returned to our flat, which was suddenly a lot smaller than before, and we lived the little fairy tale life Lily and I had always dreamed we'd have. She took leave from the Order, and I started coming home a lot earlier, just to be with them. I had previously been of the mindset that the Order could not survive without me, that I had to be there, working all the time, or else the Dark forces would win. But when Harry was born, suddenly it hit me - they would be fine without me for a while. If I went home after regular hours instead of at midnight, the world would not end. And it was such absolute rapture to come home to a warm flat, a beautiful woman, and a bright-eyed son. I liked to hold Harry - I would pick him up from his crib and rock him in my arms, hold him all the time. Lily had to convince me to put him down so I could eat supper. Life was so, so sweet.

Then after a few months, we started to notice strange things: we'd return home from visiting Remus or Sirius or Peter with the baby and find something out of place in the flat. A picture would be overturned, or a dish would be in the sink, and we knew that neither of us had done it - but who else could it have been? The first few times it happened, we chalked it up to one of us being forgetful. But we couldn't deny that someone or something was getting in our house when Sirius noticed it as well.

He'd come home with us that evening - we'd all been out eating, the three of us, and had met him by chance in the restaurant. We invited him back to the flat to just chat with us for a while. We were all having a good time - Sirius and I were alternately holding Harry, each of us wanting to get a chance to enfold the smiling bundle of black hair and green eyes in our arms. Harry was such a good baby - he hardly ever cried, and he loved to play, he played all the baby games that proud parents with too much time on their hands love to invent.

But we unlocked our flat and opened the door and went inside, just like always. We lit the candles and saw nothing amiss - I knew Lily was looking too, we caught each other's eyes and gave a sort of 'all clear' expression when we didn't notice anything immediately wrong. Sirius passed Harry back to me and said something about going to the loo, and the next thing we heard was a door opening and an exclamation of, "Bloody hell!"

I thought Lily'd just left her bra on the floor and he was going to joke about it, but we peered into the bathroom from over his shoulders and saw what had surprised him so. Water was running from the bathtub, flooding the tile floor; the sink had similarly been left on. All of our toiletries were getting soaked on the floor - all of our towels were unfolded and laid around haphazardly.

"Wa," Harry gurgled, pointing to the water.

Lily's face was ashen, paler than Remus's the day after the full moon. She wordlessly took Harry from my arms and clutched him to her, like something was going to happen to him. I saw she was shaking, and I put my hands on her shoulders to steady her, but then I realized I was shaking as well. Sirius stepped through the pooling water, letting it slosh around his precious black boots, and turned off both faucets.

"Get your things," he said, his voice tense. "You're coming with me."

So Lily, Harry, and I spent the night in Sirius's house. He offered us his bed, but we declined - neither Lily nor I slept that night, and somewhere around 2 or 3 a.m., Sirius staggered out of his bedroom, sleepless as well. We drank tea and stared at his fire and tried not to think about what would have happened if we'd entered while the intruders were defiling our flat, or what their next step would be - if they would return that night, or the next, what they would do upon their return. Lily held Harry so tightly.

It was just so stupid, that the Death Eaters would play games with us like that. I almost wished we could confront them, instead of letting them just do ridiculous, petty acts of vandalism. It also made me angry to think that somehow, they had gained access into our flat and had been in there more times than we could count. Why would they do something that trivial, that absurd? Were they that cowardly? Or were they just trying to draw it out?

That was around January - Harry was six months old. From January to mid-October, we moved a grand total of twenty-three times. Twenty-three times in ten months. Some flats didn't last but a few days, some were good for a week or more - one actually lasted a month before someone found us. We used all sorts of Charms to conceal each location, to put up protective barriers around the perimeters, to throw the Death Eaters off our tracks. We kept getting very lucky that we weren't killed whenever they found us.

Finally, we were desperate. It was September, past Harry's first birthday, which had been a singularly raucous and entertaining event due to the impeccable partying strategies of the Marauders. My pals knew how to have fun that was for sure. Harry ate it up - he loved seeing four grown men make fools of themselves to impress him. Anyway, in September, we finally met with Dumbledore in private and asked him what on earth we should do - there seemed to be nothing left.

I remember how we sat there before him, Lily rocking Harry in her arms very gently, my hand on her shoulder. We looked at him with pleading eyes and I asked, "Please, sir...tell us what to do. We're desperate."

He seemed to think on this for a long time, his blue eyes bright amidst all that white hair. Finally, he looked at us - but he was still quiet. It was like he was looking into our hearts for an answer. We met his eyes, just looking back at him, waiting patiently. Ever since we were children, we had been filled with the sense that Albus Dumbledore would always know the answer. Part of us really believed he would present a solution to this predicament as well.

Then he looked at Harry, who was watching him with great interest from Lily's knee. It seemed to be the sight of our son that did it for him, because he finally sighed, straightened in his chair, and said, "There is something called the Fidelius Charm... But I must warn you, it is complex, and involves a nearly impossible decision on your behalf."

"Please tell us," Lily implored. "We're willing to try anything."

"It involves the concealment of your location - the concealment of this secret inside a single living soul. Only one person on the earth will know where you are. This person is your Secret-Keeper. It is absolutely foolproof - except in the fact that you must choose that single living soul to know your secret. Do you see your dilemma?"

It struck me, very suddenly. I nodded slowly, feeling my heart sink.

Among the youngest of the Order, there was an ugly rumor spreading: apparently, one of us was a traitor. There had been only enough details to point to the description of the Death Eaters' informant as young, one of our year at Hogwarts, and a member of the Order, probably male. He, whoever it was, was probably a Death Eater himself by now. There were only four male members of the Order from our year: Peter, Remus, Sirius, and myself. One of my best friends was the traitor.

There was no way to prove who it was, not yet; but if Lily and I were to survive without hiding somewhere new every day, we would have to use this Fidelius Charm immediately, and choose a Secret-Keeper...without yet knowing who was the traitor. It made me sick to think that I had to choose between friends, choose who would hold the lives of my family and myself in his soul.

I looked into Dumbledore's blue eyes, then Lily's green ones. They were both watching me. They were waiting for me to decide. My chest suddenly felt wooden, the air in the room was suddenly so thick; I struggled to breathe as I considered the options.

Lily and I could not continue hiding and moving at the rate we had been doing so for the past year. We were running out of places to go, and sooner rather than later would be found and killed. I knew exactly what Voldemort was doing: he had killed my father. Now he was trying to kill me and my son - the last in the line of Godric Gryffindor. Someone with his ancestor's arch-nemesis's blood would likely be able to defeat him; therefore, my innocent son had to die. I felt sick all over again.

But if Lily and I had to choose a Secret-Keeper... There was no question that it would be one of the Marauders we would choose, but which one? Remus, Sirius, or Peter?

Which one was the traitor?

In that sneaky, treacherous way that 'self-preservationist' thoughts always employ, my thoughts began to turn against each of my three oldest friends. Some part of me was convinced that each of them had the potential to be the traitor...

Peter was the least likely, I figured, simply because he would never be brave or strong or cunning enough to do turn against us. He would never take that initiative. As long as one of the other three was there to keep an eye on him, Peter was good to go as our little brother - our babysitting charge, sometimes. We always felt responsible for him. I'll admit that responsibility got a little tiresome at times, but he made up for it. He was always willing to support us, always willing to back us with his limited powers in a fight or skirmish, and he was always willing to do the boring work no one else wanted. But even though I counted Peter as one of my best friends, I'd never had a closely 'talkative' relationship with him like Remus and Sirius. What if there was something I didn't know about him?

Remus was a good bet, of course, and not simply because he was a werewolf. Though the Ministry had made quite a fuss at the idea of a werewolf becoming an Auror; Remus had been forced to actually register with them, like he was some beast. Whenever he was out of his flat, he had to have two forms of licensure on him, one stating that he was a 'tame' werewolf, the other that he had completed a wizarding school and was allowed to carry a wand on his person. Those forms went with him everywhere. Without Dumbledore's insistence, he would have had to wear tags, as if he were someone's pet! We'd all given the Ministry hell about it, of course, had written stupid anonymous letters and sent around petitions, but nothing had changed. The system was eternally the system. But the episode had thrown Remus off the Ministry quite a bit more than the rest of us; and afterwards he'd become a little more quiet than usual, considerably more withdrawn, like he was ashamed of something - the same way he was back in school the year before we initially found out he was a werewolf. Quiet, like he was hiding something...

But we couldn't rule out Sirius; he always had a distaste for authority and an attraction to whatever was taboo at the moment. That was true of him even in school, when he held the all-time record for most detentions ever served by a single student. I believe the record still stands at the school today. And maliciousness was not beyond his nature: the episode with Snape and the Whomping Willow had proved that, even though he had repented to us a thousand times over. He always liked to be the wild card.

And yet - Sirius was my best friend. My first friend from school, if you want to get technical, the one whom I'd first met on the Express our first year. He'd been with me on every midnight excursion, save the ones I'd reserved for Lily and myself exclusively, and he'd been through so much with me. He'd taken me aside our seventh year and apologized again for the Willow incident, with tears in his eyes. This was the man who'd promised to love my child like his own; this was the one person on the earth Lily and I believed could love our son like his own.

So, even if Sirius was the traitor, even if he would betray Lily and myself without a second thought, he could not do so to our son. He was forever bound to Harry through the oath he had sworn. I remembered the look in his eyes when he'd held Harry, right after the birth, and I knew my friend would not let harm come to my son.

I looked up at Albus Dumbledore and nodded firmly, my decision made. I have a feeling they both knew that it would be Sirius before I even spoke.

So, there you have it - the best years of my life. Even though we were moving, we were happy to be together, to be in the Order, to be with our friends, to be with our son. Lily and I knew that, given the darkness of the times, we had the happiest life possible. We could work with the Order to defeat the Darkness, and could come home at night and hold each other and our son.

I loved Harry with all my heart. I couldn't wait for the day that I could take him to buy his first wand, or see him off on the train to Hogwarts, or casually mention to him the secret passageways my friends and I had spent all of our time discovering and exploring. My heart pounded with the thought that one day I would teach him about Quidditch, magic, and girls. One day I would watch him hold his own black-haired son. One day he might comprehend how much I loved him.

And I loved Lily with all my heart as well. I didn't know it was possible to have that kind of love for more than one person, but I did: I loved them both beyond all depth of measurement. I would have given my life for either of them, no matter what, though I wanted nothing more than to be with them forever. Lily was my closest friend, my soulmate, my lover - she was the one person on the earth who I would want to spend the rest of my life with. There was never any question of her devotion, to our marriage or to the Order. I loved Sirius, and Remus, and Peter; I had loved my parents; but my love for Lily was different.

And being with the two people I loved the most on the earth made it a wonderful time to be alive. Despite the dangers, and the hours at work, and the moving, and the rumors, I got to reunite with my family - my family! - every night, and hold them in my arms, and love them. That made those years the best times of my life.