Chapter Text
The Daily Prophet’s gossip section is the harbinger of no small number of evils, and this is once again proven true in the autumn of 1985, when Lily picks up the paper and sends her husband into a small but profound convolution of panic.
“The lead singer of The Dragonscales and her husband are splitting up,” she remarks idly as she reads. A few feet away on the living room floor, Harry shrieks in delight as the toy kneazle James has conjured for him does an intricate midair flip. “Merlin, seems like everyone’s getting divorced nowadays.”
James—who, up until now, has been polishing his Nimbus 1750 with a romantic level of care—stills completely.
“What was that?” He says. His voice is noticeably strangled.
“The lead singer of The Dragonscales? Perdita Harkaway?” Lily pauses thoughtfully for a moment. “Or, Perdita Lawson, now, given that she and Nigel have—”
James interrupts her by shooting out of his seat and running a hand through his hair. “I think I’m going to take a walk,” he announces, as though he isn’t already marching toward the front door of the manor.
Lily blinks before exchanging a sidelong look with Harry, who’s paused his kneazle-petting to stare in confusion at the place where his dad had just been.
“Sorry, Sweetheart!” She calls after a moment. “Didn’t realize you—er, you were such a fan of The Dragonscales.”
“No problem!” James’s voice—which is a little tight, if she’s not mistaken—emerges as a distant echo from the kitchen. “No problem at all!”
Lily concludes very quickly that there may be a problem.
* * *
Luckily or unluckily enough, the topic of celebrity divorces (or, anything even similar to it) doesn’t come back up for a while in the Potter household, which results in Lily forgetting the little Dragonscales incident altogether. Everything is peaceful and content, the quiet anticipatory lead-up to the holiday season as November shutters into December, red leaves giving way to white snow.
So it should follow that all things go to hell when Sirius and Remus come over for dinner.
By eight-thirty p.m., the volume on the main dining room’s stereo is turned up louder than should be possible—“If you say run, I’ll run with you, and if you say hide, we’ll hide”—and cautiously charmed into quiet for Harry’s little ears. Various junk foods from a plethora of vendors float around and above the long table. There is no Marauder reunion without a heaping dollop of chaos, James always says, to fill the empty space.
(The empty rat-shaped space, Lily always thinks, but doesn’t say.)
Sirius has hopped up onto one of the chairs to give an air-guitar performance. Always his godfather’s most committed and enthusiastic fan, Harry howls and cheers with delight, mimicking the movements with significantly less alacrity but more than enough enthusiasm.
The bowl of spaghetti levitating near his elbow is not as prepared for the show.
Neither, so it happens, is Lily’s off-white jumper.
“Oh!” Lily yelps, splattered in totality, and silence falls (but for Life on Mars?) for an extended half-second. Stillness creeps into the dining room.
And then, after a moment, the shocked quiet is rent in half by Sirius, who’s now the one howling to the point that he collapses right back into his seat, as well as Harry, giggling behind tiny, guilty hands, five years of life experience butting up against genetic Marauder mischief. Remus smiles and hands Lily a cloth napkin. James dutifully pretends that the whole thing hasn’t even happened, turning away from her entirely, right up until he flicks his wand covertly and disappears all stains from Lily’s clothes.
“Oh, that’s no fun,” Sirius complains, and he turns to face James. “If you’re going to turn into such a buzzkill as we get older, I’m going to reverse my position on which one of you gets me in the divorce.”
The table dissolves into laughter.
Well. To be more specific, the table dissolves into laughter…with the notable exception of one of its occupants.
Something shutters over James’s face—you’d have to be looking to catch it, so quick as it is; but one of the funny things about Lily is that she’s pretty much always looking at him when she can be—like the shadow of a matador’s cape, waved in invitation. It’s angry and a little bit nervous.
Before she can comment or reach an arm over, place a comforting hand on his arm to say, whatever’s wrong, we’ll fix it, he flicks his wand again, and all of the spaghetti that he’d just disappeared from Lily now reappears in the middle of the table, apparently now armed with the concerted mission of taking residence in Sirius Black’s hair.
“Bloody hell, James!” Sirius squawks indignantly through tomato sauce, grabbing his wand and pointing it at himself (for cleaning), and then James (for threatening), and then, curiously, as though in accusation of corroboration, at Remus (???). Lily ruffles Harry’s hair in acknowledgment as he whispers, reverently, oooooh, Uncle Pads said a bad word…
“Don’t look at me,” Remus says flatly and with honed expertise. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Not yet…”
“Merlin’s sake, I still have nightmares about the Great Hall food-fight of ‘75; I’m not going to do anything.” He rolls his eyes. “Now, can you point that back at the bloke who actually just attacked you with Caffe Concerto?”
“Right.” The wand goes down. “Yeah. Right. Prongs, darling, what the f—”
“Language.”
“Quite right. Sorry, Lily. Haz.”
Even when all attention is brought back to James, he doesn’t seem to notice; only mutters a decidedly irritated “don’t start with me,” to Sirius—“What do you mean, start? You used me as a utensil!”—before standing and picking Harry up out of his chair.
“Time for bed, Snitch.”
“No!” Harry protests, squirming, clearly having thought he’d escape the accursed bedtime within the chaos. “I’m not even tired!” Although this may be true, it’s only because of the sugary treats a certain uncle has been feeding him surreptitiously since he arrived.
James takes this in stride, and as he turns with the five-year-old clutched to his chest in one arm, he says, “How about I let you run to the sitting room on the third floor to see if your great-great grandfather Percival’s ghost has stopped by to read his books before I take you to brush your teeth?”
“Cool!”
And they’re gone from view within the next thirty seconds.
Now left at the table and to their own devices, Lily, Sirius, and Remus share a befuddled look between the three of them.
“Well,” remarks Remus, “that was strange.”
“Very,” Sirius agrees, and Lily hums.
There’s a nagging feeling of recognition in the back of her mind, like she’s seen this somewhere before. Something about James’s agitated reaction, whatever must have triggered it…there’s something a bit strange afoot, and it has to do with James.
She breathes something long and exasperated out of the corner of her mouth.
“Jesus wept,” she mutters, and lifts her wand from her boot (old habits) to clear the plates.
Sirius, who’s had some sort of abstract anthropological fascination with organized muggle religions since fifth year, turns toward her with interest. “Did he?”
And that—as it were—ends that.
* * *
The next time isn’t her fault. Well, in fairness, none of this is her fault, because it’s downright insane, but regardless, this particular instance especially isn’t her fault.
It’s just that the book she’s reading is so sad.
So, when James walks into their bedroom one night in January 1986 to see her weeping softly at her novel, huddled in a cocoon of comforter, she doesn’t think twice before wailing, “Why do all the good couples always end up getting divorced?”
She sees him freeze through a murky haze of book-ushered tears, but even in her state, it’s immediately apparent that something’s…off.
“I’ll go get you some chocolate,” he says, inexplicably, despite the fact that she’s never once asked for chocolate when upset (primarily because she keeps some readily accessible in her bedside drawer).
But off he goes, stiff like a mannequin, arms pinned to his sides like he’s not sure what to do with them.
And all Lily thinks is, huh.
* * *
When she finally recognizes the pattern, it’s a summer day, and she laughs about it for a solid five minutes straight.
Nothing particularly noteworthy happens to trigger the realization, which is the funny part. There’s not another incident, or another storming-off, or anything like it. It just pops into her head one day, like the answers to her long-passed exam questions used to: James can’t stand to hear the word ‘divorce.’
And Lily is a good, loving wife, so it’s not to say that she immediately plans on leaning into this new fact about her husband, necessarily, or that she’ll try to goad it into existence; it’s just that (as any good scientist knows) if a person develops a theory, it is the responsibility of that person to test that theory.
So, test it she will.
It takes a bit of thinking to determine what would be a viable topic: how to bring up divorce casually and unceremoniously. She’s not going to up and announce, I want a divorce just to see what would happen, because a) that’s not true, b) that would be traumatizing for all parties involved, and, most importantly, c) she’s pretty sure he would collapse on the spot.
So.
The best and most effective tests are those that rely upon a certain level of truth and normalcy to properly function, she decides. It wouldn’t suit her purpose to make something up or create a problem where there isn’t one, and therefore, the most effective course of action would be to find some part of their lives in which the word could actually make an appearance.
It takes some thinking. Six hours of it, to be specific.
* * *
“Do you know what’s quite funny?” Lily asks the next morning as the two of them drink their morning tea and read the Prophet. Harry’s still in bed, and woe betide the parent who decides to wake their kid up early in summer holidays for no good reason.
“What’s that?”
“Petunia thought we should get a prenup when we got married,” she says breezily, “like you were going to be after my money. Ha! I still can’t get over that she doesn’t believe you’re rich.”
“We’re rich, my love,” James corrects automatically, raising his left hand to waggle a ringed finger, before his eyebrows scrunch. “And she wanted us to get a…what?”
“A prenup,” she repeats, “a prenuptial agreement. I suppose it’s rather muggle, though. It means that before the wedding, we would agree which assets to split—” (she sends him what she hopes is a coquettish, unknowing sort of blink) “—in the event of a divorce.”
It’s as though the air in the room is sucked out all at once.
Storm-faced, James stands up from the table to grab a scrap of parchment and a quill from the nearby bookshelf. Lily looks on in some cocktail of bemusement and amusement as he begins to write something, harsh and white-knuckled.
“What are you doing?”
“Writing a letter,” he says, as though she can’t see that.
“I can see that. To whom, exactly?”
“Your sister,” he replies through gritted teeth.
Lily’s eyebrows hike, and she does her level-best not to smile. That would pretty much topple the ruse. “Whatever for?”
James’s harsh quill-scribbling doesn’t stop. “To ask for that set of cutlery back that we gave them—I’ve suddenly remembered that it’s very precious to me, and I don’t think I trust Vernon’s sister to treat it with a sufficient level of care.”
“I thought you said that you hated that cutlery.”
“Did I?” A wandless accio, and an envelope appearing in James’s hand. The talent in him is boundless and ever-waiting. “That doesn’t really sound like me.”
“I think you’re overreacting a bit.”
He rips the envelope open to stuff the letter inside, tears it accidentally, swears, and then summons a new one. “I couldn’t possibly begin to know what you mean.”
Lily’s preferred field of scientific study has never been psychology, but in this moment, as she gently coaxes the letter out of his hand and pulls his grumbling form into an embrace (that she absolutely and categorically does not use to hide the smile on her face), she can’t help but think that it’s a discipline worth pursuing—if not just in her off-time.
* * *
James cottons on after a few more less-than-graceful attempts—“How about we go out for breakfast today? There’s a Mexican restaurant in Kingsbridge that’s supposed to have incredible divorced eggs.”—and the ensuing conversation is equal parts amusing and frustrating. It’s a combination she’s rather gotten used to over the past decade.
“I know what you’re doing,” James announces as he paces into the library, and then around the library, and then in a sort of feint-and-parry zigzag from the door of the library to the window. “I know what you’re doing, and I’m putting an end to it.”
“What?” Lily asks, high-toned, in a convincing play at innocence.
“Don’t play innocent with me. You’re shite at it.”
She scowls. Marriage is a lot of catching each other in ruses.
He stops in the middle of the room, thankfully for the carpet. “I don’t want you saying…that word anymore. I’m putting a ban on it, effective immediately, Mrs Potter.” He proclaims, and both of their noses wrinkle. Mrs Potter has only ever been Euphemia, though they’ve given it valiant attempts as they’ve transitioned from mid-twenties into late-twenties. It pays to be professional, or something like that.
“You can’t put a moratorium on a word, James. Merlin’s sake.”
“I think I can, actually!” He crosses his arms over his chest. “It seems like something well within my power.”
An eye-roll, insurmountable. “You can’t possibly think anyone is going to listen to you.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Looking quite superior and self-satisfied, James strolls over to the door of the library and opens it wide enough to stick his head out: “Oi, Harry James!”
Harry’s six-year-old voice trills through the manor. “Yes?”
“Whose word is law in this house?”
“Dad’s is!”
James turns to send Lily a significant look, one that doesn’t even wither in the face of her flabbergasted expression. He clears his throat and leans through the door to call again. “And why is Dad’s word law in this house?”
“Because I really want a new broom!”
“That’s my boy!”
And with that he shuts the door, looking like the cat who just got the cream. Which is ridiculous, because they used to have a cat, and he hated cream almost as much as he hated anything that reeked of Privet Drive.
Lily gapes. “I’m going to have to parent that out of him, you know!”
“Tosh. Parenting is at least forty-five percent bribery.”
“No, that’s being an uncle. Ask Sirius.”
“Being an uncle is all bribery. You’re getting mixed-up here, love.”
“You’re dodging the point—you can’t put a moratorium on a word.”
He doesn’t seem altogether very thrilled to be back on-track. “And why not?”
“Because it’s ridiculous, and you’ve given me no explanation as to why you can’t hear the word div—”
“What did I just say?”
Lily taps her chin in mock-thought. “Something about words we’re not supposed to be saying, if I remember correctly.”
James has the audacity to look relieved. “Exactly.”
“Speaking of, I can think of a few choice words I’d like to use right now, that we’re really not supposed to use in polite company.”
A sound of anguish leaves him, like she’s just burned his signed Puddlemere scarf. “Am I being tested? Is this a test?” He crinkles his nose as he scans her, and then, as though whatever he sees doesn’t make the proverbial cut, he turns his gaze toward the ceiling. “Are you testing me?”
“James, you’re not a Christian. You don’t believe in God.”
“As it happens, I’m warming up to the idea of the Devil.”
Lily groans and presses the heels of her hands into her eye sockets until spots of color dance when she removes them. “My love,” she says, although it’s strangled by a laugh she suppresses with an admirable portion of willpower, “it’s not a spell. You can’t conjure a divorce.”
This doesn’t seem to do as much assuaging as she would have hoped. James’s eyes widen further behind his specs, one hand rocketing upward to tangle in dark tresses.
“You don’t know that!” He cries. “It’s not like we know every spell in existence, Lily! What if there’s some sort of accio divorce incantation we ignored in school because Binns bored us all to sleep?” His complexion whitens. “Oh, Merlin. I’ve just said it, too. Oh, Merlin.”
This man defied Voldemort three times, Lily reminds herself. He became an Animagus at fifteen. He is the father of her child. He is deeply, deeply intelligent.
Mostly.
Possibly because she’s emotionally exhausted, or even just because you win some, you lose some, and she’s won too many to sweat the small things for any significant period of time, Lily throws her hands up, yells, “Fine, then!” and walks briskly from the room.
James’s call of “thank you, my sweet, dulcet wife!” goes unanswered.
* * *
James’s problem seems to reform and evolve as time goes on. By the autumn of 1986, he’s supposed to take Harry to a two-week-long father-son excursion into the Highlands that his father took him on back in the day (pureblood traditions continue to confuse and alarm, but, Lily reckons, on the sliding scale of oddity, this ranks pretty mildly), but he gets more and more annoyed by the prospect as it edges closer. Lily has a nagging suspicion about what it might be, but it’s been nigh on a year since she first noticed his aversion to the concept of divorce, three months since they last discussed it, and she can’t be entirely sure.
That is, until the night before the two are set to leave.
James and Lily end up hashing it out over a set of cashmere jumpers. He’s sitting on the bed, refusing to pack them, and she’s standing by the closet, attempting to do just that.
“Can’t you just be happy to go on this trip with your son, you nutter?”
“How am I supposed to be happy when my wife and I are separating?”
Lily snorts as she directs the levitating jumpers into the trunk. “I am not going to explain to you again that physically being in separate places does not make us separated.”
James is ready for this argument—as he should be, considering the fact that they’ve had it nine times in the past three days. Nine times.
“We’re a couple that doesn’t live together! Only one of us sees our son every—stop mouthing along to what I’m saying!”
Nine times, Lily thinks.
“It’s not like we’re getting a d—”
“Lily.”
Normally, she’d fight him on this, but the way he says it is a bit different this time. It’s almost haggard; like he’s tired of hearing from himself, the same way she’s tired of hearing it.
“You really, genuinely can’t stand to bring that word up, can you,” she murmurs, eyes bouncing across his face, gauging and searching.
He just nods, looking tired.
There’s really no two ways about it. Lily sets down the pair of trousers she’s been folding to clamber onto the bed, hugging him from behind with her arms around his middle. He sighs, a quiet whoosh of air, and leans his head back onto her shoulder.
“James,” she says solemnly, “I feel like by this point in our marriage you should know that I’m deeply, deeply obsessed with you.”
He turns his head toward her neck, and she can feel the smile he smothers in the column of her throat.
“Nice to hear it, anyway,” he murmurs.
“I bet.” Lily shifts, sitting fully behind him on the duvet so that her legs can wrap around his waist. She brings one hand up to brush through his hair. It’s a bit koala-esque. “Now, do you want to finally tell me what this is about? It’s gone on long enough, don’t you think?”
The low exhale he heaves at the question pushes warm air onto the side of Lily’s neck, and she shivers, eyes closing. He speaks after another few seconds of contented silence. This is how he operates, she knows: heavy conversations bookended with affection. Reminders, always reminders—I’m here for you, I won’t ever leave. Whatever you need to say, I’ll be here at the end of it.
“It’s really quite stupid,” he admits after a while. She shakes her head. However much they may joke about it, stupid doesn’t really apply to James Potter, and especially not to his feelings.
He continues. “When we left Hogwarts, I was—well, you know—I wanted to be this big hero, in the Order. I wanted to take Voldemort down myself. I really reckoned I could, as well. I’d always been like that, you know. Ever since I was a kid. I wanted to be the best at something, so I was.”
Lily nods. She remembers him during the war, valiant and brave but, alongside those things, bombastic and risk-taking. Many of their fights were about him charging headlong into danger because he thought, at some level possibly below his own consciousness, that he’d come out the other side unscathed. He presses on.
“I remember thinking that I was going to change the tide of the war, idiot that I was. And then, when you got pregnant, on top of everything, I kept thinking: our child is going to be special. Our child is going to be the most important person on the planet. Of course I didn’t mean it like that,” he adds frantically, as though she might misconstrue him, “I didn’t—it was only just that you are so special, and I had all this ego about me, so I thought…you know.” He swallows. “How could a child that came from us be anything but the most special little thing in the world?”
Already, Lily’s beginning to see where he’s going with this, but she lets him keep going. He needs it.
“And then…and then Harry was born, and the Prophecy came, Merlin, the Prophecy—it just…it was like suddenly I found out I’d been divining things without meaning to. Everything I’d thought was suddenly real: in some convoluted way, I was going to turn the tide of the war, and Harry…Harry was the most special person on the planet. It felt like I’d…”
Now, Lily finishes the thought for him. “…Spoken it into existence?”
“Yeah.” He leans up and turns around so that they’re facing one another, and at the first opportunity she gets, Lily weaves their hands together. His lips quirk up for a split-second. It’s a victory. “Yeah, and I really do know how crazy this is, Lil, but…I dunno. It feels like the things I’m most scared of in the world are the things that come true when they’re said out loud.”
She’s flummoxed, a little bit, and entirely too in love with him to live. How do people cope with so much feeling?
“James…” she whispers, and he looks up, and his grin is self-effacing.
“You were right, calling me a nutter.”
Lily shakes her head, vehement. “No. No, I wasn’t—and I don’t think that.” She un-weaves their hands; only to grab his wrists and pull him a little closer. His hands land on her hips, and it’s almost enough contact for her, but she lets it slide—no matter how near he is, she always wants him nearer. She grabs his face. “In fact, I think we can actually counter it, between the two of us.”
His face lights up a little, and she knows that he knows what she’s doing, but what is love if not diving in regardless?
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. So I’m going to say something out loud, and I want you to agree with me, okay? We’ll speak that into existence.”
He nods, and she looks right into his eyes, into every color that slides along gold iris.
“You and I are stuck with each other for the long rest of our lives,” she vows, “and probably even after that. You’re going to go on this trip with Harry, and you’re going to have a great time looking at dragon-prints or whatever it is you rich purebloods do, and you’re going to come back after two weeks, and after that, James Potter, I’m not letting you go again.” They both exhale, and it’s nice, to buy into this power he’s believed them to have. It’s nice to think that they might tell the universe what-for. “Do we have a deal?”
James smiles, big and bright and beautiful, and he leans in, presses a kiss to her forehead; her lips. Forehead kisses became very important to him once Harry got his scar. “Deal,” he whispers.
They can work to a compromise about the whole moratorium on the word thing. Plus, Lily thinks covetously, feeling a little smug and in on a joke, it’s not like it will really ever come up in this household, anyway.