Chapter Text
Vertigo paralyzed him. He fell like a jagged rock in the sea.
The door splintered open as a piercing coldness engulfed him at once. It came faster than he had imagined… rehearsed… dreamt confidently about in the chill of midnight.
Lily–
He plunged into an icy cavern that unfurled beneath him, mouth agape as he gasped against the biting pangs of ever-after. It had happened too fast, too clumsily. It hadn’t mattered how many nights he’d run through this scenario, practiced his wandwork, set up various wards.
Because this was it.
“Not Harry–”
This was where life folded into itself.
“—please no, take me—”
It tore from his fingertips, an effortless, easy release.
“Stand aside—”
The cottage dissipated, fluttering away high above him into a flurried hurricane of muffled wails and sinister howls. He very badly wanted to scream, but the latch in his throat had soldered shut.
“Silly girl–”
He was choking now, there were no two ways about it.
“I said, stand aside!”
Walls stretched to a monstrous height, painted emerald with flashing thunderbolts that struck shadows of dogs and wolves and rats in the night.
“Prongs? Prongs, can you hear me?”
But it was then, as it all slipped away, that James Potter heard nothing at all.
He’d been cut free from his senses, his daring, his barking mad wits, and instead grew possessed by the great weight of nothingness. Life roared past deafeningly, dimming into hollow, flickering glimpses of the happenings, the yesteryears, the what-could-have-been’s…
He’d been falling, fading, feeling the stitches of his memories dissipate into the fray, until he felt Lily last of all. Her scream tore down into that spinning grave like a sonic boom, and it was then that he supposed: that was all there was to it, then.
Until a fair veil of goodness billowed around him, like a big white sheet in the morning wind. It engulfed, thrashed, and smelled of soap too clean. He was goodness, whipping in loud ripples over the great green grass, snapping so from the line to roll wild in a sudden squall. He was goodness, stolen away instantaneously, disappearing into the sky, before the surge of everything stood still…
…
…..
“Mum?”
He could vomit, he felt suddenly. He could wretch up a big belly of blood and soot and all the twisting black vines that tangled inside him then.
“She’s out back!” he heard his father Fleamont call.
James braced himself in the corridor, his fingers etched into seams of cold peeling paper. The nightmarish hall that had swallowed him whole had snapped back into reimagined walls of silence and time memoriam. Steadying himself felt near impossible and he hadn’t remembered even getting out of bed.
“Mum?” he repeated again, a desperate beckon against a sudden crippling pain. He heard his father shuffle about the study downstairs, as if a bout of excited pacing had been triggered by James’s voice.
Outside, cloudy skies casted bright rays of broken light over the surrounding wheat fields. A sway of distant rain signaled the arrival of a brewing storm; James could hear his mother snapping sheets from the clothesline in the yard as she wrestled them against the growing wind.
“Effie!” Fleamont bellowed again. “Effie, he’s awake!”
Hell, he thought. A bolt of pain burrowed deep into his forehead, searing like a twisting metal prong.
He heard the back door slam open as his mother stumbled in to toss a laundry basket aside with a loud clatter. Tsk, her tongue clicked. “And you’re telling me now? How long?”
“Just happened,” Fleamont whispered.
“And Lily?” Euphemia pressed.
Silence. The chatter of soft staccato clocks clicked in rhythmic heartbeats through the home. James heard his parents' shoes creak from the study below, crossing the threshold to approach with an odd and hesitant shuffle. They stopped timidly at the foot of the stairs and gazed up at him in tandem, as if they’d practiced this.
“Hon?” Effie called softly, her voice tight as she grabbed the bannister.
“How long I been out?” he mumbled with a hand pressed to his forehead. He opened his eyes slightly and slumped down one of the steps. Bleary vision focussed at his parents gazing up from below, and he realized only then that his glasses had gone missing. And yet, after a moment, he could see his mother there, somehow.
Euphemia inhaled sharply and hitched the hem of her old apron around her fist. She hoisted herself up the stairs at a surprisingly spry speed and crashed into him weightless as a sheet.
“James,” she said hoarsely, a breathy whisper that swam about his ears. He allowed himself to tumble into her arms, wildly confused, and struggled desperately to rid this sense of utter oblivion from his head.
He’s awake, his father had said, hadn’t he? Wake up, you clumsy tosser, James thought. Up, up, up–
“Don’t suffocate the boy,” Fleamont laughed shyly. James peered out at him from beyond his mother’s arms, flashing a gaze of bewilderment and concern down at his father.
“I fall or something?” James reasoned. That must’ve been it. Must’ve fallen clean off my broom and–
Euphemia let out a strangled sob and reached out to snatch her wriggling son deeper into her embrace. They stood there, the three of them, and the wind howled again.
The house felt different, James noticed. As if fabricated from clumsy descriptions of passing memories and jumbled stories. The rugs had all been trampled, despite being replaced just last summer. The portraits, now vacated, depicted curious scenes he didn’t completely recognize. And there, just in the family room, was a hole Peter had accidentally burned into the wallpaper over a childhood Marauder Christmas! Hadn’t Moony just patched that–?
“I’ll put the pot on,” Fleamont said quietly, disappearing into the kitchen.
“Mum, really…” James patted his mother’s shoulders, prying himself away from her stranglehold in a timid plea. “I’m all right, I swear. Got a wicked headache is all,” he winced, reaching back up to grasp at the splitting seams of his forehead again. “Am I bleedin’? How’d it happen? Sirius didn’t see, did he?”
Gods, he’d never hear the end of it. The eulogy of his flying reputation: Our jolly ol’ Captain Potter, head pathetically splattered over the garden like a great Harvest pumpkin!
At this, Euphemia inhaled quickly. She gazed at the pulse in his brow with solemn dread. “Harry,” she whispered sharply, eyes swimming. “Oh, James, he’ll be all right. We were watching the cottage from the kitchen, just now.”
“Harry?” James repeated, brow furrowing. “Grandfather? Is he here?”
“No, James, not Grandfather Harry...” Effie’s features softened now as she reached to smooth a thumb over his forehead. The pain subsided almost instantly, stealing all the breath from his chest in overwhelming relief. He heard the shrieking voice again, far away now.
Harry!
His mother’s hands fell to smooth out the worn wrinkles of her apron. She looked younger somehow, despite her curious grief, and James felt as if he hadn’t seen her this way since boyhood. She stared back at him tiredly, tears brimming through the glossy blinks of her lashes, and finally nodded in a way he couldn’t quite read.
“You’ve fallen, yes. Quite a long way back... I suppose there’s a fair bit you don’t recall just yet.” She fell into her practiced composure and turned quickly to cross the hall. The windows were flung shut as if to keep something out, and the great roaring wind rattled angrily against the panes in retaliation. “Let’s join your father. He’s been eager for you to wake.”
They descended the stairs quietly. James stared at the nape of his mother’s neck and noticed the silver strands she’d once swept up had turned golden brown and black, just like his. Her skin sparkled with ivory pox scars, though James had no memory of this happening.
She wiped at her nose again, her chin hoisted high, and he knew she was trying very hard to be brave.
“Son,” Fleamont chuffed, eyes crinkled and swimming. His father approached, smelling of pipe tobacco and Sleekeazy's Hair Potion, and held onto his boy with the gusto of an old, forlorn friend.
“Dad,” James pressed against him, frustrated now. He saw the fresh scar marks brushed over his father’s face too and felt a sickened panic of what must be clear signs of obliviation. “Please, what are you two on about?” he whispered, stepping back to gaze at the two of them.
The pot came to a wail on the stove top. Effie looked hesitantly up at her husband before shuffling into the kitchen to tinker with the tea.
“We’re…” Fleamont started, unsure of where to begin. “Your mother and I, we weren’t expecting you for a long while.” His finger tapped nervously against the door frame. He looked anxiously out the window into the fields.
James could hear the clocks again. They ticked louder now amongst the vacant silence between the three of them.
Fleamont sighed deeply then, as if surrendering to a confession. “We haven’t seen you since ‘79. Do you remember that, son? The night we… went away? You came alone. We couldn’t risk exposing Lily to the fever, what with her being–”
James stared, his eyes fixating on the scars crawling down his father’s neck. “‘79? What do you–”
“1979, James. Two years ago. I said goodnight, and you waited up with Mother until she… until she said goodnight, too. Sirius and Remus had to come and tear you from the garden when she went – took you back to London to quarantine through the fortnight.”
A flicker of a memory tugged away at the belly full of blackness that sat within him. He felt the twisting vines unravel slightly, like something was letting go. He remembered his fists burrowing into dried, cracking garden soil. He remembered the withered stalks of his mother’s prized tomatoes, tearing from the ground in his bloodied hands as Remus grabbed his shoulders to drag him back inside.
The night Euphemia Potter died of the fever.
He thought he could’ve died, too.
A dark rumble broke through the windows from the storm now overhead. Euphemia dropped a tea saucer, her voice hitched by a swallowed curse, and time felt as if it shifted exponentially.
“It’s coming, James. This is very important,” Fleamont continued, stepping closer. Taller. James cowered in his father’s shadow as if he were a boy, shrinking and turning to gaze out at that old garden in the rain. Tomatoes and cabbages and great sprouts of rhubarb were ripe. Thunder clapped again.
You’ve fallen, yes. Quite a long way back...
“Something terrible… something very wicked has sent you here. It’s not like your mother and I.” Fleamont looked maddened now, like barred words were sitting desperately at the tip of his tongue. “From here, they can take you – and we won’t know who or where. The storm is your tether to all The Echoes now…”
James stared at his father horrifically, eyes white and dry as the swirling clouds outside.
“You mustn't let them take you too far. Do you understand me, son?” Fleamont continued breathlessly. He gripped tight at James’s shoulders until–
“ARE YOU MAD?” James bellowed.
He thought of the hallway that had just swallowed him whole as he tore himself from the man’s grip. This couldn’t be Fleamont Potter… And that woman , that woman covered in pox scars…
He thought of the emerald lightning and shadows of dogs and wolves and rats that leered down at him in this nightmare that stewed in his belly. He thought of falling, of fading, of landing haphazardly in this odd hodgepodge of his childhood home. He thought of his mother’s smell, her steadying embrace, the soothing relief of her thumb over his brow.
Prongs? Prongs, can you hear me?
“The Echoes,” James repeated, turning now to stare at Euphemia. “What did you mean, you’ve been watching Harry ? Where’s Lily?”
His chest stirred with embers now, voice rising, fists clenched.
“She’s not here,” Effie murmured. Her eyes flicked to another portrait on the wall depicting an emptied and darkened cottage room with windows blown wide. “We thought maybe she’d find us, the way you did. James, I don’t know where she’s gone. Harry’s still in the village–”
At this, James propelled himself out the back door, hair twisting madly beneath the black clouds like billowing plumes of golden wheat. He stumbled into the garden and made to disapparate, only realizing he hadn’t the slightest recollection of how to do so.
“The magic’s gone, boy! It’s not the way it used to be,” Fleamont called out through the creaking door. The wind began to howl now as James turned back to shield himself from the oncoming blasts. “You’ll need these! They appeared, just after you did.” He held up James’ glasses, frames shining like new.
The hair on the nape of his neck pricked coldly. James stared back at the man through sheets of stinging rain and felt the heavy, fleshy weight of his body settle like a chill.
The magic.
The very fabric of what had been his life.
“Am I… Father, is this–?”
“Yes, Jamesy,” Fleamont nodded. “This is exactly what you think.”
James clasped his hand over Fleamont’s forearm, pocketing the glasses as rain continued to pelt. His father urged on, “Once you’ve been called by someone in The Echoes, the storm will take you. It’ll rip you in a million directions and bring you to them, but you must return to us when you can. It’ll make sense soon, I promise. Nothing can hurt you now, James, remember that. Find Lily, but don’t get lost. We’ll watch after Harry–”
A bolt of lightning struck the fields then, erupting in a bright blue stripe of flame across the swaying barley. James felt the vines in his belly churn, gripping tighter as his center pulled him back into the compressing gravity of a black hole. He heard wind in his ears and leaves spinning over cobbled stone. The storm whipped around the house, the little garden now the eye of a great twister over the farm, and what last he saw of his supposed mother and father stared back at him like a desperate attempt to anchor him there.
The event horizon, that space where time and life and energy cannot escape, collapsed into him at once, tearing him from his mother’s eyes as he heard life chatter in a loud and deafening symphony around him.
And then again, as suddenly as it had brewed, the storm evaporated back into the sky and all that was happening stood still.
He was crouched low beneath prickly branches now, staring out into the night at a blown out cottage in a village square.
Godric’s Hollow stood hauntingly silent.
Nothing but orange and amber leaves swirled quietly over the stench of seared and ruptured jack-o-lanterns. They smeared over a cracked and crumbled drive, and whatever remained flickered weakly with candle light burning low.
James felt streaks of fear encapsulate him abruptly, and he had been made to feel very small now…
“ Master?” croaked a familiar yet unbelonging voice.
It was there – everywhere – the voice completely encapsulated every sense of him.
He heard a foreign rasp of labored breathing in his ears. Felt the cold and twitching nails of something terrified and trembling dig deep into his palms. He pushed to crane his neck around to catch sight of this sudden entrapment, yet found his gaze locked mercifully in the eyeline of what horrible vessel had befallen him.
They can take you – and we won’t know who or where…
And suddenly, without prompt, the vessel raced into the night.