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He’s not a ghost.
Ghosts can’t touch earth. They float, dreamlike and translucent, and haunt specific buildings that marked their lives. They can’t dig themselves out of their own graves, crawl across the cemetery and all the way to the outskirts of the village, where their home used to be. They don’t look haggard and wild, with matted hair and dirt under their nails.
They feel no hunger, not like he does — none of this unbearable, frenzied need to see his wife, every minute he’s away from her weighing as heavy as his entire dead body that his legs can no longer carry. And still, he drags himself forward along the ground, hands and elbows and knees adding up to form a perverse machine, powered by sheer force of will.
It might be hours or even weeks before he reaches the gate of their cottage — there’s no space for time in his mind. There’s only one steady stream of thoughts that runs clear and precious: Her. Lily and Harry. Home.
The gate opens at his touch, his greyed hand somehow still carrying the imprint of his magic, the wood recognising its master. The footpath that leads up to the door is dressed with pebbles that press too sharply into what’s left of his skin; they dent his palms and shred to pieces his already torn clothes. It’s a miracle he’s not bleeding when he reaches the threshold. It’s a miracle he reaches it at all.
His knuckles rap at the door’s bottom rail twice before his hand falls limp on the welcome mat; it’s a miracle they make any sound at all, yet the door opens and it’s her, dressed in black that matches the bags under her eyes.
She looks ahead, then down and shrieks, before kneeling and cupping his jaw, tilting his face up. He’s finally seeing her again.
“James? Is that you? Are you alive? How??” Her voice had never been so high-pitched when he was alive.
He hacks — his throat is dry, his mouth is dirt. “I don’t know.” It’s a miracle the words come out at all.
She pulls him in her arms and grabs his wrist, checks for a pulse. He didn’t think he had one, but it’s beating under her fingers. Maybe he didn’t have one until she touched him.
“How?” she whispers, her beautiful eyes wide and teary. “You… we buried you. We buried you.”
She breaks into sobs, and her hand grabs at his filthy, ragged clothes. They buried him. He was dead. Maybe he’s still dead. He died to save them, he remembers it well.
“Where’s Harry?” he croaks.
“He’s sleeping.” She smiles through her tears. “He’s well. Voldemort couldn’t touch us.”
She pushes her long, unkempt hair away from her face. A fresh scar mars her forehead — red, angry, lightning shaped. He tries to lift a hand to it, but his trembling fingers only make it an inch upwards before she catches his intention and takes his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together.
“It’s the mark of your protection,” she explains. “Harry has it too.” She brings their joined hands to her lips and kisses his fingers, dirt and all.
He’s still wearing his ring — they buried him with it and his glasses, in his wedding robes. The glasses are smudged and crooked, the robes in tatters, but the ring glimmers spotless, without a scratch. It reflects the sunlight as she runs her lips over it, then presses a kiss on his palm, and finally rubs his hand against her cheeks. It’s a miracle his withered skin can still wipe her tears away, yet he can feel their warmth seeping inside him, reaching his soul; maybe he is alive, after all.
“You’re back,” she chokes out. Her green eyes meet his; the sight soothes his hunger, his mind quietens. For the first time since he died, he is aware of surroundings and circumstance — a blue sky above him, the chirping of birds, the smell of food wafting from the kitchen.
Death was a blur — a white haze, shapeless, quiet. A void where he was left alone with a persistent, repetitive voice — his own voice, echoing inside the caverns of his mind. Lily. Lily and Harry. Home. A mantra that shut out all of the haze’s efforts to claim him — it tried to tempt him, the back of his mind remembers, with lights and voices and images that he paid no heed to — until it all crumbled, crumbled on him, the sounds and visions were gone, and only darkness remained, splinters of wood and six feet of dirt.
If he had been alive then, he would have died for lack of air — so it was lucky that he was dead, because death made it possible to dig his way to the surface. To claw away at the ground for what might have been hours or even weeks, his direction in the dark only led by his own voice in his head. To ignore pain, hunger, thirst, suffocation; to have no worries, cares, or fears.
There was nothing to fear — he was already dead.
And nothing else to do but clamber out of that wretched grave, face the right side of the earth again, and crawl home.