and it's like you can't breathe

You look at her and it’s like your heart can’t take it, so you look away, but then you see her bright red hair in the corner of your eye and you have to look again. She smiles at you and grabs your tie, pulling you to her and kissing you before twirling away with a laugh. You blink, and she’s by the door, beckoning you with a crook of her finger.

“Come on, James!” she says, impatient. “Charms starts in two minutes.”

“I know, I know…” you tell your girlfriend, and she turns on the spot and starts walking down the stone hallway. Shaking yourself out of your daze, you finally follow her, jogging a little to catch up.

“Hey, Lily!” you shout. “Wait up!” But her long legs are no match for your easy speed gained from the Quidditch pitch, and by the time you enter the Charms classroom and give Professor Flitwick a nod, you’re walking next to her and your fingers are entwined with hers.

-- -- -- -- --

She’s walking down the aisle, and you tell yourself it’s just her white dress blinding you, because James Potter does not cry. It cannot be tears obscuring your vision. She reaches the altar and smiles at you, and you see that the tears in your eyes are reflected in hers, and that at least makes it okay. You take her hand in yours and turn to face the priest, moments away from starting the biggest adventure of your life.

-- -- -- -- --

You’re sitting at your desk at the Auror office, trying to file the last of your paperwork so you can go home for the weekend, when you hear the tell-tale pop of Apparition behind you. A smile appears on your face as you turn around thinking your wife has come to coax you home, and disappears when you see the Healer wearing a sombre expression.

“Mr Potter,” she says gently, almost apologetically. “I’m here about your wife.”

The blood in your veins turns to ice at the words your wife and your heart feels like it’s plummeting down the stairwell of a thirteen-story building. The Healer offers you her arm. “Sir, if you would…”

You take the arm she extends and the pair of you Disapparate, and the twisting in your stomach is not from the force of it.

-- -- -- -- --

Some hours later you’re still sitting by her bed, holding her cold hand in yours. They told you she had a stroke, that the Healers were too late to save her. You started pushing at them, asking what kind of bloody wizards they were if they couldn’t even save a stroke patient. They reminded you gently that not even magic can cure everything. Desperately, you started wailing about how only old people get strokes, and you could see the pity in their eyes when they told you that sometimes these things just happen. Then they told you they were keeping her alive, just barely, long enough for you to say your goodbyes.

You think of the last time you saw her, early that morning. She had still been in bed when you left for work – she had a day off, a reward for cracking a particularly tough case that she was going to tell you the details of tonight. She had smiled lazily when you turned on the lights in order to find your clothes. “I’ll go get a bottle of wine for tonight, shall I?” she’d suggested. “Let’s celebrate.”

She’d been out getting the bottle when she’d collapsed.

-- -- -- -- --

You watch them lower her into the ground, and your mouth is pressed into a tight line. It feels like you’re the one in the coffin, in a small enclosed space, unable to breathe.

-- -- -- -- --

You haven’t gone into your room since the day she died. You’ve been sleeping on the couch, still wearing the same clothes, staring distantly into space during the days and barely remembering to eat. It’s been a week when Sirius rings your doorbell.

He doesn’t say anything as you step aside to make room for him to enter your flat. He takes in your dishevelled appearance and that of the flat around you and sighs.

“Oh, Prongs.”

You haven’t cried in the past week, but it’s as Sirius broke something inside of you. Tears gather in the corners of your eyes and gradually spill over. You fall back onto the couch as your legs threaten to give out.

“She’s – she’s really gone, Padfoot,” you say in a strangled voice, looking up at him through teary lashes.

“I know, mate,” he replies quietly, sitting down next to you. That’s how you stay for a long time, sitting silently next to each other, tears spilling down your face as Sirius bites his lip and wishes he could make you feel better.

-- -- -- -- --

When you finally go into your room, later that evening, the first thing you see is a book laying open on her nightstand. The cover is unfamiliar to you, as is the title – The Hobbit – but the picture doesn’t move, so you know it’s a Muggle book.

You pick it up, and see that she’s left off at the beginning of a new chapter. Before you fully know what you’re doing, you’ve put on a jacket and Apparated to her grave with the book still in your hands.

It still smells of fresh earth, and the flowers left by well-wishers from her funeral have begun to droop. You take a deep breath.

“Hey, Lily…” you say, and your voice wavers. “I, um. I found this book, and you never got to finish it, and…” it takes all of your willpower not to burst into tears.

You sit down on the bench in front of her headstone, open the book, and begin. “The day after the battle with the spiders Bilbo and the dwarves made one last despairing effort to find a way out before they died of hunger and thirst.”